


Ultra Vires

by luna_plath



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Age Difference, Angst, Castles, Chaptered, Character Death, Coming of Age, Dark, Darkfic, Deaf Character, Disability, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explicit Language, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gray Jedi, Loss of Virginity, Minor Original Character(s), Mystery, Power Imbalance, Romance, Sex, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Teacher-Student Relationship, The Force, Training, Violence, Wilderness, explicit violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:26:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6887977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna_plath/pseuds/luna_plath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Across his face—in a raised, white line—stretches the scar she gave him in the snowy wood. </p><p>Inexplicably, Rey’s stomach drops at the sight of it. “You’re hurt.”</p><p>His dark eyes never leave her face, but this time she doesn’t feel the same painful, intrusive presence in her thoughts. </p><p>It’s as if he’s truly in front of her, on Luke Skywalker’s hearth, and not tangled up in her dream.</p><p>“T-this isn’t real,” she stutters.</p><p>Kylo takes her hand, brushing the tips of her fingers over the scar that diagonally bisects his face. “Isn’t it?” he asks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter is mainly about Kylo, but Rey will enter the story very soon. I'd love to hear any thoughts/comments/suggestions for this fic. I have an outline of where everything will go but I love considering reader input. 
> 
> "Ultra vires" is a latin legal phrase meaning "beyond the powers."

The air is dusty in Hux’ mouth, his clothes stained from the massive cloud of debris he ran through to get to his shuttle. Three ‘troopers are shouldering their way through the ranks with Kylo Ren held between them. Hux grabs onto one of the metal hand-holds along the walls of the spacecraft for support as the floor abruptly shifts beneath his feet. 

The ship makes the jump into hyperspace with a lurch that he feels down to the soles of his boots, bracing himself for the moment when the transport stabilizes. One of the ‘troopers looks to him for further direction—Hux can tell despite the indecipherable plastoid helmet—and he barks out instructions before the ‘trooper fully utters a question.

“Get him a medical droid! That’s an order!”

One ‘trooper stays with Kylo Ren, the other two dash off among the cavern of the ship’s interior to fetch a medical unit. Hux notices, absurdly, that Ren is not unconscious, that the man is watching him with knowing, black eyes.

Ren lifts one arm and begins tearing at his clothing. The other arm is scorched to shreds, immovable. Hux takes in a breath through clenched teeth at the destruction he sees. 

Ren’s side has been brutally carved open by a bowcaster bolt the length of his forearm—how the man hasn’t expired from blood loss is a mystery to Hux—and Ren’s burns carry the distinct, repulsive odor of burnt flesh.

In the Officer’s Academy on Arkanis, Hux had been forced to watch hours of desensitization videos to prepare him for the carnage of military life. He has seen more than his fair share of human suffering, but watching the way it _gives life_ to Kylo Ren is foreign and intrinsically abhorrent in a way that knots his gut. 

“Don’t—“ Hux starts, holding out one gloved hand to stop Ren from doing further damage to himself, but Ren’s face, weeping blood at the edges, arches into a scowl.

Ren leans over and spits a mouth full of blood onto Hux’ boots. 

“You should have _left me to die_ ,” Ren croaks, his black eyes wild against his skin, his face unnaturally pale from loss of blood. 

The medical droid arrives, a syringe of analgesic at the ready.

“ _No_ ,” Ren growls. 

“Don’t be a hero,” Hux argues, dismissing Ren’s protests as machismo. 

Ignoring him, Ren turns to the droid. “Skip the painkillers. Perform your work.” 

Not being human, the droid has no qualms with performing an operation on a patient without anesthesia. 

“As you say, sir,” the droid replies.

“This is mad,” Hux says, as if his disapproval will stop halt the flaming cauterization and bacta injection taking place before his eyes. 

Ren’s skin shivers with some unnatural energy when the droid begins it’s work, disinfecting and healing the rends to his frame. Hux grimaces in second-hand agony. If the ranks of ‘troopers find this spectacle as repulsive as himself they do a better job of concealing it.

“We find strength in pain,” Ren says, staggering to his feet.

Hux stands there, slack-jawed, as Kylo Ren holds his arms out wider so the droid can cut away the fabric from his chest. The medical droid is cleaning away dried blood while bacta sizzles against Ren’s flesh, steam visible above his wounds, the treatment knitting together the trauma to Ren’s side. The ‘troopers pass by, following orders as usual, or too rattled by the implosion of Starkiller Base to take notice, order taking form while Hux looks into an opening in Ren’s chest that shows the dark, bloody glint of damaged organs.

Ren’s eyes have gone yellowy, like he’s not really seeing, like Ren is privy to a realm that is separate from the pandemonium the Order has left in its wake. Hux opens his mouth to call for help just as Kylo Ren looses consciousness.

***

He sleeps for what feels like an eternity.

Periodically, he hears the shallow rumble of people speaking around him, the voice of a cool, disinterested medical technician instructing an assistant.

“The hand is badly damaged. We can re-attach it but they’ll be a visible scar.”

Kylo doesn’t know who the physician is speaking to, only that he feels a dull, unapologetic throbbing in his arm, his side, a blinding, fiery line across his face. An obtrusive memory surfaces and he’s remembering the bone-deep rumble of a collapsing planet, the flash of anger along his spine as he saw the scavenger girl with the traitorous stormtrooper, the queasy lurch of both horror and triumph when his father, lifeless, fell to the depths of Starkiller Base.

 _Not my father_ , he thinks, fighting the urge to curl his mauled hand into a fist as it’s being stitched back together. The pain clears his mind, focuses his senses to a razor’s-edge. It’s then that Kylo notices the presence. 

There’s a brush inside his skull, within his limbs, as if a separate, breathing being has been roused beneath his skin, filling his nose with the scent of motor oil and red desert sand.

 _Scavenger_ , he snarls. The presence flees, ungracefully scrambling out of his reach before he can latch on and pursue her energy. A carafe of water shatters on the bedside table, slim shards glinting on the tile floor, the destruction mirroring Kylo’s rage at the blatant personal intrusion.

“The pain should be over soon,” the technician says, unfazed by his outburst. “Don’t use your hand for two hours. After that, full function should return.” 

The voice of the medical tech is bleary in his ears, like his head has been packed with clean, wispy swabs of cotton. They’ve given him an analgesic. Damn Hux.

His rage has exhausted him. Breathing slowly, Kylo clears his mind before sleeps overcomes his faculties, pushing out all thoughts, all feelings, a dark, unyielding curtain descending over his mind.

***

The planet hosting the Supreme Leader is in a small corner of the Unknown Regions. First Order pilots are adept at navigating the area, but the landscape has earned its name for good reason. Hux checks on the pilots more often than protocol requires, but he prefers to be overcautious in this matter now that their prized weapon and a quarter of their troops have been summarily eliminated. 

Hux even checks on Kylo Ren in the medical wing of the evacuation shuttle. 

“General,” he says, bacta working at the violently red mark on his face.

It is still a shock to Hux that Ren is more than a phantom, that there is an actual human, a _man_ , that exists beneath his blackened mask. Somehow, seeing Ren’s young face in the flesh is more disconcerting than facing Snoke himself.

“You’ve recovered quickly,” Hux observes.

Ren shrugs with his formerly-injured shoulder. The gesture is smooth, natural.

“Why is that one taking so long to heal?” Hux asks bluntly, gesturing to the mark on Ren’s face.

One side of Ren’s mouth creeps up, as if the situation is amusing, as if Ren’s near-fatal injuries are something to be laughed at. Hux is struck by the fact that he hardly knows this man, force of nature that he is.

“Lightsaber injuries take much longer to heal. And they always leave a scar.”

“Lightsabor injuries?”

“The scavenger girl,” Ren explains. “She cut me. She’s strong in the force but unaware of her potential. I can feel her even now.”

“And you plan to tell the Supreme Leader that a scavenger from Jakku bested the Master of the Knights of Ren _in lightsaber combat_?”

Hux feels an immediate strain around his throat, like the thin metal of a garrote has been knotted around his windpipe. 

“I will go before the Supreme Leader because I was dragged away from death, back into this hellish feedback loop of Eternal. Meaningless. Destruction.”

Ren sits up from the hospital bed. His naked chest is bandaged in places and perfectly smooth in others. Hux sees stars in his vision, round spots of color and light blocking out his senses. His limbs begin to burn from loss of blood, escalating from a painful tingle to a violent scraping along his nerves.

“I allowed myself to be _ripped open_ by a scavenger from Jakku so I could be a human instrument for the force, so that this galaxy won’t have to be needlessly torn apart _over and over again_.”

Hux brings his hand up to his throat, his nails nearly clawing into the skin, until Ren abruptly yanks the pressure away. Hux sucks in a noisy lungful of air as Ren looms over him, his chest healed yet covered with scars, his body hard like a stone.

“There are only two sides to this conflict, General. That girl will either learn the ways of the force through me, or through Luke Skywalker. I intend to follow her straight to him.”

This close, Hux sees streaks of yellow in Ren’s brown eyes, like wisps of flame. Every breath sends a clotted burning through his throat. Coughing, Hux backs out of the medical ward with spots still clouding his vision.

***

_The problems start when Ben is only four, when he’s just old enough to be out from under his parents’ eye. He is standing outside when the world in front of him blacks out and he sees a man in a mask. The mask is black, the man is taller than any he has ever seen, even taller than his father. The man’s voice is metallic, terrifying._

__”Where is Luke Skywalker?” _the man asks, his voice like a machine, and Ben screams that he doesn’t know, doesn’t know, and then his mother is shaking him, holding him close under the shade of the trees in the garden._

_Ben feels something hot and sticky on his face. Wiping at it with his hand, he realizes that his nose is bleeding._

_“It’s alright, sweetheart. It was just a dream,” she tells him, smoothing his hair away from his face._

_Ben holds tight to his mother’s shirt but he knows that what he saw was real, that people don’t fall asleep and have dreams while they’re awake, standing up._

_Things get worse. When Ben is six he gets into an argument with an older boy at school. The boy, Jacen Antilles, pushes him to the ground and Ben gets so angry that he looks at Jacen and_ shoves _with his mind, as hard as he can, the older boy yelling as he’s abruptly thrown to the floor. Ben doesn’t touch him with his hands or his fists but Jacen breaks his arm with an audible snap, sobbing and holding his arm to his chest while Ben’s teacher shoves the boys apart and calls his mother to the school._

_Ben is punished, even though he didn’t start anything and he didn’t mean to push Jacen that hard or break his arm at all._

_His uncle Luke is visiting when it happens. His mother takes him home from school that day and his uncle is waiting for them with a pot of cactus tea from Tatooine at the table._

_He explains to Ben that Ben can do things other people can’t, that he can move things with his mind like uncle Luke can, but that it’s wrong to do this to other people. Ben frowns and opens his mouth to argue._

_“He pushed me so I pushed him back, I didn’t realize—“_

_His uncle nods. “But that’s exactly why you can’t use your powers yet. Because you can’t always predict what they’ll do. You have to be careful.”_

_“It’s not my fault that I’m this way!” he says, angry at himself, angry that he’s being punished, angry with Jacen Antilles for starting the fight in the first place._

_His uncle hugs him. “I know, kid.”_

_The hug doesn’t make him feel better. Ben goes to his room and stares out his window. He breaks the branches off of trees, one by one, letting the twigs pile up outside. He snaps the leaves off the branches over and over until there is a big pile, watching each green leaf fall and be blown away by the wind._

***

_He remembers the day he found out who his grandfather really was._

_His whole life, Kylo grew up knowing that his parents had fought in the rebellion against the Empire, that his mother had been adopted, that she had never grown up knowing her birth parents, but he was nearly a man when someone put the pieces together for him._

_The news was all over the holonet, his mother’s political ruin as the biological daughter of Darth Vader, the Sith that purged their galaxy of Jedi and enforced one of the most brutal regimes in history._

_The secret wrenches him open with blinding intensity, a crevice splitting him down to the bone. He wants to believe his mother, initially, wants to believe that this is a baseless attack by a political enemy and not the truth._

_Still Ben Solo then, he finds Luke and takes one look at his uncle’s desolate expression. His blue eyes look into Ben, as if he’s pleading with his very soul, begging for Ben to_ please understand, we didn’t want his shadow hanging over you— __

_“You knew.”_

_Luke doesn’t nod. He doesn’t shake his head. He just looks at Ben with eyes that speak of mistakes, plundered dreams, and the deepest regret. Luke’s heart is breaking right in front of him and all Ben wants to do is shake it harder, to crumble the shards into dust._

_Later, as Kylo, he decides that this moment—those few seconds of pure, soul-eclipsing rage at his mother, at Luke (his fucking_ Jedi Master _), at his father and anyone else complicit in this betrayal—that moment was when he stopped being Ben Solo and transformed into the dark beast Kylo Ren._

_“Is that why they sent me here, because they were afraid I’d end up as the next fucking Sith overlord of the galaxy?” he seethes._

_Ben stalks around his uncle. The roar of blood in his ears overwhelms any sound that Luke attempts to make._

_“Were my parents_ that afraid _of who I was as a ten-year-old boy—is that why they chose to lie to me for MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS?”_

_“Ben—“_

_Books fly off the shelves. The furniture rattles against the flagstones of Luke’s cabin. Ben is reminded of the tantrums he’d thrown as a young boy, scared and overwhelmed with the strength of his own abilities. He’d gotten better, for a time. Luke had even trusted him to teach the younger students, to go on journeys away from the academy on his own, but this, this is different. This rage is new blackness that is taking over his chest, seeping into his heart while the windows shatter in their frames._

_“What are you going to do if it doesn’t work?” Ben asks. “If I end up like him? Does that mean you’ll have to kill your own nephew to save the galaxy?”_

_They’re standing in his uncle’s private rooms, there are pictures of his parents on the walls, there’s a communicator that Luke uses to call his mother, some scattered books and datapads on his uncle’s desk._

_Ben flings his hand to the right and something jumps out of his fingers, something sparkling and_ painful _, and then the couch is on fire, smoke quickly billowing through the room and filling his lungs._

_“How does it feel to know you were right all along?” Ben screams, the curtains going up in flames as his uncle tries to reach for him, to mollify the destruction that is happening, that has already happened._

_Ben storms out of the now-burning cottage, the flames licking the stones. Luke hasn’t made it out yet. Ben doesn’t look back._

***

Kylo feels like his insides have been scraped raw, like the space where his heart used to be is flayed open, exposed, his blood dripping down his front in an uncontrolled stream. He feels like he died back there on Starkiller Base and his body is just a bag of organs and bones being dragged around by order of his Master.

The Supreme Leader stares back at him, his shrunken-in frame of a height with Kylo. In the flesh, the Supreme Leader is withered, his skin is bluish from lack of sun, his audience chamber bare except for an altar cluttered with artifacts. 

Hux isn’t in the room with them, but Kylo can feel him waiting in one of the upper balconies to have his audience with the Supreme Leader, knows that he’ll be watching their exchange with interest. _Let him watch_ , Kylo thinks.

“My apprentice.”

His master is always deadly calm, his face offering no suggestion of how the man truly feels.

“You,” Kylo spits out. 

He has no fear now, or gratitude, or even ambition. The man before him had once been his most trusted teacher, the one to mold his discontent with the Jedi into a fervent ideology, but all Kylo feels at the moment is unrelenting rage for the self-flagellating sacrifice he has made, the weakness he has inflicted on himself.

It is customary for a Knight of Ren to bow to the Supreme Leader, it would be considered the height of rudeness for him to refuse, yet Kylo feels no compulsion to show curtesy. 

He unclips his broken lightsaber from his belt and violently throws it at his master’s feet. 

“I put that blade through my father’s chest— _for this!_ ” 

Distracted, Kylo only notices that he is screaming after the fact.

He gestures to the marble walls and the spidery columns and the orange light that bleeds in from the open doorway to the temple steps, the atmosphere of this planet illuminated by a massive red star.

“I have polluted my soul, I have slaughtered children in their beds as they cried for help that would not come, all so that I could be re-made in your image. All so that I could command the force as you do,” he says venomously. 

“Is your father truly dead, Kylo Ren?” Snoke asks.

Kylo nearly reaches for his Master’s throat, the foundations of the temple rumbling as his anger climbs to levels that had terrified him as a child. As Ben Solo, he had feared his own outbursts, traumatized by their intensity, but now Kylo is beyond childhood worries. _Let the temple collapse. Let us be crushed by brick and mortar and stone. Let the force pinch us out in a quick shift of the ground beneath our feet. Let this god forsaken galaxy put me out of this misery._

“I saw the life leave his eyes as I pushed him over the edge!” he screams, his lungs burning from the effort.

He does not need a lightsaber. Moving the energy around him is trivial now, a simple matter of directing his will and watching the result materialize in front of him. Kylo makes a quick gesture with his hand and sends his Master flying into the temple wall. 

He heaves a breath, his ears ringing in silence. Snoke telekinetically throws a chair at him, bombarding him with disorienting waves of energy that normally would have sent him careening back fifty feet, on his back with the wind knocked from his chest, but Kylo plucks the chair from the air and rends it into two pieces, sending the fragments in opposite directions. Dimly, he hears the sound of wood splintering against the temple wall, feels the waves of energy dissipate like a stone casting a ripple in a pond.

He uses the force to suffocate his Master, to lash his nerves with pain, pouring all the agony that Kylo has suffered during these long years of training into the punishment his Master now receives. Nothing will ever make it enough, Kylo realizes. No amount of torture or destruction will return what has been taken from him every day since he began this merciless journey. 

He releases the energy he’s been holding. Snoke lies prone on the temple floor, clearly alive but noisily struggling for breath. It takes several moments before the emaciated figure rolls onto his belly, drawing on the force to right himself. If the Supreme Leader put up any defenses to his attacks they weren’t strong enough to be noticeable. 

_He can’t stop me_ , Kylo realizes.

He looks into his Master’s cold, black eyes.

“Whatever secrets you have are illusory. Whatever power you held over me was destroyed when I shoved my father over the edge.”

Snoke brushes dust from the shoulder of his robe, shakes off the debris from the temple stones. His master is over 600 years old and clearly unsurprised by his outburst.

“Kylo Ren, you have completed your training.”

The orange light continues its creeping path along the floor. Dust from their confrontation settles on the veiny marble of the temple’s surfaces, a soft exhale of energy rushing over every plane in the sacred space. 

“Killing your father, being grievously injured by this girl—these acts have pushed you out of the realm of chaos and into the eye of the storm. _You_ rule the force, it no longer rules you.”

Snoke pulls an object from the sleeve of his robe. Somewhere, deep inside himself, Kylo understands what it is, he understands what is about to happen.

“Kneel.”

Kylo sinks to one knee, his stomach bottoming out, unbelieving.

Snoke is holding a lightsaber. He thumbs the activation switch and they are both bathed in clear, red light. The Supreme Leader brings the saber to rest over Kylo’s shoulder, the beam even and powerful. The heat of the blade causes the fabric at his shoulder to smolder dully. 

“Kylo Ren, I pronounce you a Master of the dark side, and finally fit to wield this blade. Rise, and accept it as Lord Ren.”

He feels the force rushing around him as the handle is placed in his palm. 

Numbly, he observes, “This was my grandfather’s.”

Kylo can sense it in the identity of the object, can feel it in every gust of power raking over his skin. 

“I have entrusted it to you so that you may wield it in my service, if you so choose,” Snoke replies, unfazed by his near death at the hands of his apprentice. 

“So long as you serve the dark side, you have my blade,” Kylo replies.

Snoke accepts this by turning his back to approach the altar. Kylo takes this as a dismissal, thumbing off the activation switch and moving to leave.

“Tomorrow we will plan. But now, I think, you should reflect on all that has occurred.” 

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard) and a [tag for this fic](http://lunaplath.tumblr.com/tagged/ultra-vires) that you can follow. I would love to chat with you guys about this fic, or about reylo in general!
> 
> Rey finally joins the story. Please let me know what you think!
> 
> [Cave inspiration](http://resources2.news.com.au/images/2014/02/24/1226835/815466-67155386-9854-11e3-a5ad-5f99c6c437b4.jpg)

Poised on a boulder, Rey lets her legs dangle over the edge of the rock, a damp, heavy presence settling on her skin. There’s a storm-head rolling in from the seashore, a rush of air and energy butting against the outcropping of stone where she sits. The wind isn’t cold, but it’s a different kind of heat from what she knows from Jakku.

A bead of rain lands on her cheek, soaks into her skin. Rey blinks and feels the calm aura of her meditation slip away, like a handful of water draining from her cupped fingers. She exhales and closes her eyes, but before Rey can fully clear her mind she feels a hot presence against her face.

The contact is stark and wrenching, fitting along her cheek with a velvety weight that burns too warm. Rey reaches up to touch her cheek and feels the clear outline of another hand beneath her own, the grip firmly angling her jaw towards the swelling clouds over the sea. 

She gasps, feeling like she’s been burned, jumping from her position on the boulder. 

The hot energy clings to her like a shadow at sunset: long, dark, velvety in the humidity. 

_You_ , Rey thinks, remembering a tall, robbed figure staring down at her from across their locked light sabers. 

She reaches for the saber looped to her belt and the presence recedes, but his voice cuts across her spine.

 _I’m not trying to hurt you_.

Rey doesn’t believe a word from him, a fact that he responds to with prickly annoyance. But more than whatever anger she has for him, most especially she is angry with herself, with this damned island, with Master Skywalker for not teaching her how to keep out the tangles of the dark side and Kylo Ren. For not teaching her anything, a desperate voice in her head pleads.

 _Get out_ , Rey thinks, her anger buzzing in her ears at the invasion. In clear contrast to the monstrous tide of anger she’d felt coming off of him on Starkiller Base, Kylo Ren slips easily through her clumsy defenses. Her fear weakens her, dulls the strength of the light side and fumbles her grip on the Force. 

_There’s so much you need to learn_ , he says, and there’s almost a wistful tone to his thoughts.

 _What do you want with me?_ she asks, but he’s already withdrawing from her of his own volition. His presence fills her with the heady scent of firewood burning in the frigid air, the gust of it stinging her lungs. 

Rey is tempted to kick one of the uneven stones in her path, to pick up one of the many speckled boulders on the cliff-side with the force and chuck it into the ocean. A gust of thunder makes the hairs on her arms stand up. She squeezes her eyes shut, unsuccessfully tries to channel some form of mental focus, and forces herself to take measured steps down the stone path ahead of her.

***

The storm pelts the metal roof of the stone hut that she shares with Master Skywalker. Rey chops a pile of root vegetables into slim pieces, dumping them into a deep pot of water and placing it above the fire. The smell of the stew fills the kitchen as the pieces of meat become tender. Rey’s stomach growls, a pointed distraction from the pile of grubby equipment on the table that she’s been piecing together in her spare time.

The luxury of a real meal and identifiable vegetables is still a shock to her, a premise of her new life that continues to feel unreal. Sometimes Master Luke will disappear for days at a time without explaining where he’ll be, but they always have plenty of food, clean water, and the cool sea breeze to ground her on this rocky island. Rey tries not to compare her life now to her years on Jakku, but some days the loneliness is uncanny.

 _And the secrets_ , she thinks. It was one of the frustrations against her master that Rey hasn’t been able to shake during her several months of training. She knows that her master can sense her curiosity about the Jedi, about his former students, about the force itself, but he ignores her barrage of questions and reprimands her to focus. He teachers her the forms of defense that even younglings master before they begin their real training. He has her run the length of the seashore and carry rocks the size of her frame. Rey ends each day physically tired but frustrated. She wants answers. She wants the truth, but all her master has given her is meditation, isolation, and carrying rocks on her narrow back.

Rey eats her simple meal in silence. Luke has been absent most of the day, likely meditating in some isolated corner of the island. She pulls her pallet in front of the fire and curls up on her side, picturing a warm, quiet beach with soft sand, its banks calmer than the ragged shores of her Master’s island. The light of the flames glow under her eyelids, the kindling emitting a sharp, smoky scent, one of the logs making a popping sound as it weakens.

With each inhale and exhale the sounds of the fire grow more distant. Rey sees herself on her pallet, her hair pulled back into one loose knot. The silhouette of another figure, reclining on his side, his body angled toward hers, blocks Rey’s view of the fire. Kylo’s chin is propped up on his hand, his elbow planted on the pallet of blankets. 

Across his face—in a raised, white line—stretches the scar she gave in the snowy wood. 

Inexplicably, Rey’s stomach drops at the sight of it. “You’re hurt.”

His dark eyes never leave her face, but this time she doesn’t feel the same painfully intrusive presence in her thoughts. 

It’s as if he’s truly in front of her, on Luke Skywalker’s hearth, and not tangled up in her dream.

“T-this isn’t real,” she stutters.

Kylo takes her hand, brushing the tips of her fingers over the scar that diagonally bisects his face. “Isn’t it?” he asks.

Rey tries to jerk her hand back, to retreat from the dissonance of his warm skin against hers, but his grip tightens around her wrist, anchoring her closer. 

Gasping, she jerks awake, sitting up with her hand reaching forward into the empty air in front of her face, suddenly alone by the now-extinguished fire. The hut is dark but her eyes are adjusted to the lack of light. Rey’s chest rises and falls as she takes several hungry breaths, her stomach dropping to her knees as she sees the outline of where another form had lain beside her on the pallet. 

Shakily, she touches the imprint Kylo’s body left on the blankets. It’s still warm.

***

Rey stuffs her feet into her soft-soled boots, tugs on her arm wraps, and fastens her belt and saber. She doesn’t know what hour it is, but the moon is always bright on Ach-To. The rain has let off for now, leaving the air remarkably light, cooler than what she’s felt in days. 

When Rey reaches the stairs to the tunnel she’s grateful for the torch she’s brought along with her. It’s over-bright in the open air, but the tunnel to the subterranean temple is so dark that she wouldn’t be able to see two inches in front of her without it. Luke has plenty of them—long branches of driftwood with dried hunks of moss coated in oil—another device on this island that is purely hand-made and not connected with the technology of the outside world.

Bowing her head slightly, Rey is careful to look for low-hanging rocks. The stones that form the path of this tunnel have been worn smooth by countless footsteps before her. 

Until now, she had never entered this place. Luke had shown her the entrance when she first arrived but its clearly identifiable presence in the force had been so strong she’d been overwhelmed with nausea every time she walked near it. It had distressed her at the time, but Luke had only shrugged and told her that it was nothing to be concerned about.

Now, Rey isn’t as certain.

The further she walks the more frigid the air becomes. Jakku had been bitterly cold at night, but now Rey is unprepared for the rapid change in temperature. The passageway opens out and her eyes are immediately drawn to the impossibly high ceiling, where a narrow opening in the rock lets in starlight along the temple floor.

The temple is round, almost cone-shaped, with an engraved obelisk in the center. There is a shallow stream of cave-water surrounding it, with several meters of dry sand buffering the stream and the needle-like stone. Rey secures the torch upright between two rocks before she steps into the shallow stream, the water flooding into her boots. 

The closer she stands to the obelisk the brighter the temple seems. Three meters separate her from the stone, and before she can fully reach it something takes hold of her shoulders, grounding her in place. Rey’s eyebrows knit in confusion, and then she is sinking to her knees in the sand, a rushing sound filling her ears.

***

She sees hungry children, bellies swollen from malnutrition, ribs poking through young skin. Mothers dig through trash for something to eat. The children stare at the towers and arching travel lanes of the modern city, these urban scavengers relegated to the ground. Buildings block out the skyline, casting their lives into an uninterrupted twilight, the roar of traffic above their heads so thick that Rey’s eyes begin to water. This is Coruscant. 

The image changes and she sees an Imperial labor camp. Bodies of unnumbered humanoid species bent over workstations, tools shaped like fine pinchers weaving a carpet of wires into power docks for the most advanced security shields. The wires are made from precious elements scoured from across the Galaxy. A creature in all black, hardly a man at all, watches over their work. His helmet is black and gleaming, his breaths are audibly pushed through a voice modulator while each of the dusty workers toils in silence. His name is Darth Vader. 

Rey sees several hunched over, tri-armed beings in the mines of a planet she’s never visited. The mines form highways into this planet, tunneling for valuable rock, the sturdiest industrial stone in the galaxy. She sees these same three-armed beings polish and refine the surfaces of the rocks until they gleam. The choicest cuts are sanded down to form sculptures, to build monuments, its makers spending their whole lives in this planet’s core, living and dying under torchlight. Slabs of finely polished rock are shipped across star systems to Hosnian Prime and installed as flooring for the New Republic Senate chambers. 

Rey watches as different regions of the galaxy pulse with the force, as souls depart from one planet from disease, starvation, genocide, as other systems flare all the more brightly from the free energy. She sees the Death Star explode, watches as the lives of nearly two million people blink out of existence. In the wake of so much death the force dives into chaos, culminating in ships crashing to the surface of her home planet, Jakku. 

Her head begins to ache with the onslaught of so many images, but one more crowds out the rest, one more face pushes through until she can’t look away.

Ben Solo is sixteen. He wears a dark brown traveling cloak, his eyes as intensely focused as she remembers from the snowy darkness of Starkiller Base. 

“How long does it go on like this?” he asks, his features twisted into a frown.

Ben is seated in the co-pilot’s chair of a small shuttle, the craft already set to their destination. Rey sees her master, then, a light gray robe pulled around his shoulders. His hair is still a sandy brown, with a faint streak of gray at each of his temples. Luke’s eyes are sad as they rest on his nephew.

“It is not our place to intervene.”

This answer seems to personally offend the teenaged Ben. 

“Then _what is the point?_ ” he asks, his hands gripping the armrests of the co-pilot’s chair, his knuckles white from the strain.

His brow furrowed, Luke asks, “The point of what?”

A pause, and then, “Of being born this way. Like us.”

Luke’s expression becomes unreadable.

“The force gives us abilities, but not _knowledge_. Any attempt we could make to alter the regimes around us or to take control of these events will always have a consequence, the dark side is created by the exercise of the light—“

“Where are we going?” a small voice asks.

Ben and Luke turn in their seats. A tan little boy stands at the entrance to the cockpit, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

“Somewhere safe,” Luke answers. “Don’t worry about it. Just go back to sleep, I’ll wake you when we get there.”

Rey sees a flinty look take over Ben’s eyes. For the first time, she notices the dark, unmistakable stains of blood on his boots, soaking up to the ankle in some places. The saber she wields now is clipped to his belt. 

The child retreats to the area designated for the crew. Luke’s hands remain steady on the controls as waves of gravity shudder around the nimble craft. Artillery aimed at the planet behind them, Rey realizes.

“But we can save this one,” Ben says tensely, pointedly not looking at his uncle. Luke doesn’t reply.

***

The next morning Luke summons her early with a simple tug on her mind. Rey wakes feeling guilty, an uncomfortable tightness in her gut before she even remembers why. Then the memory of Kylo rushes forward, sharp and detailed, followed by the images from the temple. She avoids Luke’s gaze as she splashes her face with cold water in his little hut and pulls on a gray cloak that’s coated in a waxy, water-resistant covering that’s meant to keep out the damp. 

Her staff in hand, Rey follows her master along a rocky path that’s so steep it makes her calves ache from the incline. The air is still thick with a fine mist from last night’s storm, with layers of fog obscuring the skyline. Dewdrops drip off of fern leaves and catch in her hair.

“This island was a sacred place for the Jedi,” Luke says, his voice snapping Rey out of her thoughts. “When the old council was destroyed we lost all records of it. Certain parts of the island have an especially strong connection with the Force.” 

They reach a plateau, the steep grade of their hike leveling out to show a half-formed stone structure.

“What is this?” Rey asks, pointing ahead with the tip of her staff.

“It used to be a temple,” Luke explains. “There are several on the island.”

He doesn’t mention her exploration of the cave the night before. She wonders if he could sense what she was shown. Rey mirrors his steps over rocks and overgrown tree roots, peering up at the crumbling spire of the former temple. A few unsteady arches of stone remain, reminding Rey of the sandstone peaks of Jakku, tall and narrow and worn from the elements. 

Something flips in her stomach as she clamors over the tall roots of a tree, it’s limbs carpeted in moss. Rey recognizes the feeling as discomfort. 

She does not like this place.

Luke’s expression is one of clear fascination, his light eyes holding a well of curiosity at the markings etched into the rocks. He takes his time looking over the symbols, his expression furrowed in concentration. 

Edging away from her master, a rumble in her spine urges Rey to reach her hand forward and run the pads of her fingers over the scratches on the stones, to lean closer, to open her senses up to the shiver that prickles across the back of her neck—

“ _Be carefulI_ ”

Luke grabs her arm and jerks her away from the crumbling wall, making her breath catch in her throat.

“I haven’t looked up the meaning of all these markings. Jedi ruins are usually harmless, but don’t touch anything.” 

Rey nods tightly, taking in the narrow, spiky writing that covers every surface of the stones.

Murky light shines through cracks in the walls, but as Rey walks under the cover of the temple ceiling she feels a warm, pronounced buzzing overtake her, like all of her limbs have fallen asleep, her blood slowing under her skin. Rey tries to flex her fingers and bring some feeling back into her hands but finds them stiff, fixed in place. She tries to open her mouth to speak, to breathe, to scream, but her face is similarly immovable.

The burning flush of panic takes over her spine, flooding from the crown of her head down to her gut. Rey cannot speak, she cannot move, and the prickling on her skin is transformed into a broil. The etchings on the stones take on a sheen, the lines burning darkly, a shadow crossing over the sun as the light side of the Force surges out of the air around her and a rushing void of energy takes its place.

Rey feels a familiar presence, feels _his_ energy tugging at her through the Force. Rey fights it, sees the air in front of her practically shiver from her efforts, but Master Luke does not notice her, does not see the calamitous change taking place. 

Panic thick in her throat, she is not strong enough to stop Kylo Ren from hooking his energy around her waist and metaphysically yanking her from the temple on Ach-To and into a field of blackness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A decent-sized chapter to start the long weekend! Please feel free to leave comments or asks/messages on [tumblr](http://lunaplath.tumblr.com).

“Destination, Lord Ren.”

Kylo signals to the young man with him to pause for a moment.

“We will not need an escort,” he says, turning his head only a quarter of an inch to acknowledge the trooper.

Kylo gestures for the boy to follow him, the 'troopers visibly relieved that they won’t be required to traverse the lands beyond the base. He enters the craft hanger and finds one of the angular black speeders that function best in this planet’s atmosphere. Kylo makes the hand-sign for _come_ , sitting in front of the controls with space for the boy to ride behind him. It has taken him time to memorize the various hand-signs the boy uses as a language, but Wex, the thirteen-year-old he’d found on one of the outer-rim planets, is very good at showing Kylo the sign in his mind.

Together, they pull out of the hanger, leaving the crowd of skittish 'troopers behind.

 _You they fear_ , Wex thinks, his words in the unique order used in his signed language. There is an undercurrent of derision to Wex’ thoughts, an emotion that’s attached to the message being shared with Kylo. Derision toward the ‘troopers, not toward him, Kylo realizes.

 _Many fear what they don’t understand,_ he answers, actively pushing the thought forward.

Kylo urges the speeder through a narrow, rocky tunnel that’s punctuated with shafts of light. The tunnel is a natural feature of the planet, formed when one slab of rock fell against a sturdier one. Pulling upward sharply, Kylo steers the speeder through one of the shafts. Grainy dust grazes over his exposed face, raising the hair on the back of his neck. 

The rush of the open air once they clear the narrow shaft is brutal. It’s one of the features of this planet that Hux and the officers so dislike; the unique wind patterns sent a craft full of newly-minted ‘troopers into a mountain-range one week prior. Kylo takes no joy in seeing First Order resources wasted, but witnessing Hux’ purple-faced expression of anger did bring him a measure of satisfaction.

Ahead of them is a structure built into the base of a mountain, its surfaces black and unreflecting. Kylo flies them just inside the square maw of the temple’s opening, powering down the speeder once they’re covered by the overhead shelter. The winds pull at his cloak, his hair, every inch of uncovered skin. Kylo squints his eyes against the affront and jerks his head for Wex to follow him inside.

Once they trek deeper into the stone structure the roar of the wind disappears, replaced with silence. Kylo stops in front of one of the early passageways, signing for Wex to enter.

 _Meditate_ , Kylo instructs.

Wex shakes his fist _yes_ in affirmation, the light iris of his eyes particularly vivid in the poor light.

Kylo turns his back on the boy, walking deeper into the temple with no light to guide him besides the re-chargeable flare he carries. The flare is enough light that, if he holds it up to the wall, he can read the inscriptions chiseled into the rock, but it’s not enough light to truly guide his path. Closing his eyes, Kylo feels ahead of him with his mind, adding to the mental representation of these chambers that he’s constructed to orient himself.

Almost as soon as Wex dims his energy in meditation does Kylo notice it, an unfamiliar undertone to the energy around him that he has never felt in a religious space. This temple was once a place of pilgrimage for the Sith, with many legends surrounding it over the centuries, some with more veracity than others. The planet itself had a reputation for strange expressions of the Force, leading to its fear among the Force-blind ranks of the Stormtroopers. 

Kylo closes his eyes more tightly, resting his gloved hand against the stone wall, his nails practically snagging against the carvings in the rock. He is stretching himself thin, feeling for the verge of energy that should decidedly _not_ be in this location, his senses tonguing a sore opening in the air around him. He feels pain spring up behind his eyes from the strain of concentration, but then Kylo is rushing down the hallway after the sensation, his hand blindly tracing the wall. 

He is unsteady on his feet, his world tilted slightly, upending his balance and almost sending him toppling over as he rounds an unlit corner. He feels the tenure of energy more strongly now, like the sticky taste of copper in his mouth or the acrid scent of ozone before a storm.

Kylo rips his gloves off, exposing as much of his skin as he can to the shivery rush of the air around him. He opens his eyes a crack and is surprised to see light pushing through the stones of the chamber, not the bright light of day but something softer, like silver. As he fully opens his eyes Kylo is overcome with different sensations, feelings that can’t possibly belong to him, thoughts that surge into his own mind with shocking ease.

—the damp smell of a wood, the spongy pressure of moss under his feet, wide fern leaves grazing his legs—

Kylo can practically taste her panic, and the magnitude of Rey’s fear feeds his power. He claws his hands into the energy around him, something urging him to _pull, pull, pull_ until sweat is beading along his forehead and soaking the back of his collar. Now, the chamber is nearly fully lit, the etchings shine with energy, and it takes every scrap of his will just to hold on to the grip he’s formed. Kylo feels the burn of lactic acid in his muscles, his arms straining in protest, his shoulders quivering from the effort, but the pain nourishes him, wraps itself close around his heart and makes him strong.

This is not all his doing, he realizes, this rush of tangy metallic energy. He has never felt energy like this, the Force has never taken on this texture under his hands, not in his hours of meditation as a Jedi or the humming oscillations of power shown to him by the dark side. Kylo’s senses are awash with it, with this pulsing, crackling, silvery power that he has no name for. Its energy fills the air around him, making it grow dense and thick with electricity. He can feel something taking shape in front of him, something in between his hands, transforming from the barest outline of the physical to something real, tangible, solid.

Rey’s terror is so intense that Kylo nearly looses his grip on the energy around him. A surge of energy inside of him rails against it and hauls her forward.

This final pull is what does it, tossing the Force on its side and dumping Rey in front of him in all of her shaking, scrambling physicality. Her voice rips through the air around them, a scream that dies to a whimper when she recognizes the form in front of her. Kylo’s hands are pinning her arms to her sides, the strength of it grounding them both. If he wasn’t so flush with the temple’s energy he would have already dropped her in shock.

Rey takes a few shallow breaths before she collapses, the weight of her falling on him completely. Kylo holds her close to his chest, his arms around her, eyes closed to the metaphysical disturbance around them. He breathes, his face brushing the top of her unconscious head. He smells the salty damp of the sea.

***

Kylo lies on the floor of the temple until his sense of time and reason returns to him. He lets the volatile energy that swept them up drain out of his body drop by drop, until his breathing has returned to normal. He keeps a constant watch on Rey, his hand feeling for the pulse in her neck, checking that her breathing is steady. Kylo feels dazed, like he has taken a sharp blow to the head, his thoughts scattered, wispy, disoriented.

Wex finds him after a time. The young man gapes at the twisted pair of them on the floor. Kylo sits up from the dusty granite, wipes away a smear of blood from his eyebrow, a spot where the rough stone had cut him in his fall. Rey has bruises along her arms, but they are his doing, the work of his imprecise efforts to ground them both on this planet. 

_Outside storm_ , Wex signs. _You make?_

 _Don’t know,_ Kylo replies. He takes Wex’ offered hand, standing with the boy’s help and dusting himself off. Kylo picks up Rey as gently as he can, his whole body aching. Together they leave the chamber behind, with Wex holding the forgotten flare aloft to guide their way. 

By the time they reach the parked speeder Kylo can hear the storm. It’s letting up, by the sound of it. The three of them wait in the shadow of the temple while the rain clears. It takes only a few moments, but it gives Kylo enough time to breathe deeply and find whatever reserve of strength he has to fly them the short distance to the base. He climbs on the speeder first, placing Rey in his lap with her body facing his and securing her as best he can with a spare cord of rope. 

_Hold on to her_ , Kylo instructs, this time with his mind, his hands occupied by the speeder’s controls.

Wex climbs on behind him, reaching his hands around to keep Rey in place. Kylo starts the engine and pulls out of the temple. The bulk of the storm is over, with only a fine mist of rain to complicate their journey.

Kylo does not signal his approach to the base, does not use his comm to ask for a medical technician to meet them in the hangar. He flies them as carefully as he can through the outcroppings of rock and relies on the Force to land them smoothly. Exhaustion tugs at the edges of his faculties, diminishing his senses. He kills the engine on the speeder as soon as it’s safe, wordlessly accepting Wex’ help with Rey, uncaring if any of the stationed ‘troopers see their arrival.

***

The heat flushes through her skin, the sun swelling large in the sky like an overripe fruit. Rey sees the familiar sheen of sunlight reflecting off of metal as her family’s ship sends clouds of dust across the landscape. 

There is no Unkar Plutt to hold her still. Rey sprints after the steadily shrinking craft until sweat pours off her brow and her lungs contract in pain. The sun is still there, so bright it eclipses the visible form of the ship in the atmosphere. Rey staggers forward a few more steps, her breaths coming in pants.

“You’re not angry at them.”

Rey turns her head and sees Kylo standing in the dessert with her. The landscape becomes more indistinct, like the details of Jakku are slipping away as her focus shifts to him. 

“I couldn’t be angry. I always thought they would come back for me.”

Kylo steps closer to her. “Because they were your only chance of not being alone.”

Rey opens her mouth to argue but he interrupts her before the words can get out.

“You think no one else would want you. That there must be something wrong with you, otherwise why would your family have left you here?” he asks, holding his arm out to the wastes of the dessert. 

Not wanting to look him in the eye, something hard in her stomach knows that it’s the truth.

The dessert sun blacks out and Rey is being jerked awake, confused at first, Kylo Ren looking down at her. Her whole body aches.

She groans as she opens her eyes and tries to lurch upward, reaching for him, her nails snagging on his shirt and trying to claw at his face. 

“Y-you!” she gasps, but Kylo isn’t groggy from sleep, and it only takes him a moment to wrap his hand around both of her wrists, so hard it’s sure to leave welts along her skin.

“Don’t you want to know why your family left you? Why the Republic tolerates the slavery you lived through and worse?”

She tries to put some measure of force behind her movements but her grip on the force is unfocused, chaotic, where his is powerful and sharp as a knife’s edge.

“The whole galaxy is out there, and you have the power to change it, but you have to stop hiding from the world.”

Rey stills under his painful grip. They’re not in a holding cell or an interrogation room, she realizes, but some kind of living space. She’s sitting on a bench bolstered in soft gray fabric, there are actual, physical books piled up on the low table in front of her. Out of the corner of her eye, Rey sees a worktable with odd bits of metal, tools, and equipment. 

In this place, the man in front of her seems almost human.

“I won’t be like you,” she says.

Kylo releases her wrists but takes her hand, brushing the edges of her fingers over the pale groove that now bisects his face. Rey feels a shiver of something over her back, like she’s standing too close to a live electrical wire and needs to back away or she’ll get shocked, but something in her pulls with curiosity, wants to know what it might feel like, wants to experience the sensation despite the assurance of pain.

Releasing her completely, he pulls off his glove with his teeth and shows her the visible scars on his hand, his wrist.

“Which side of the force do you think you used when you did this?” he asks.

Kylo Ren looks at her with eyes that unsettle her, like he’s looked into the black hole at the center of their galaxy and had its image branded in his soul.

“Have you ever fought with the light side, Rey? Have you ever tried to fight an enemy without fear or anger?”

Rey is silent. 

“That’s what I thought.”

She slumps against the wall, whatever traces of panic at waking up in what appears to be Kylo Ren’s rooms draining out of her like water evaporating under the arid sun.

Kylo stands and opens some containers that have been sitting on his work table. Once they’re opened Rey sits up, sensing the unmistakable smell of real food. He wordlessly offers her a container of noodles, grilled pieces of meat, and soft, green vegetables. She takes the offered fork and begins to eat immediately.

Kylo sits in a chair across from the low table, slowly opening his own container of food, like he is unafraid that someone could appear and snatch it away from him. Perhaps no one ever has, Rey thinks.

“You are full of loneliness, of anger, of hatred—even for yourself. You will never be a Jedi, Rey of Jakku,” he says, almost tiredly, as if he wishes she were observant enough to have already come to this conclusion.

Annoyed, she sticks the fork into her food and fixes him with a level stare. 

“If I’m such a failure then why did you bring me here. Clearly, I’ll never be a threat to you.”

His food forgotten, he leans forward in his seat. “Because I refuse to leave you behind. Becoming a Jedi as you were being trained to become isn’t just idealistic, it’s impossible. Do you know why Luke isolates himself from the world, from all humanity? _Because it’s easier to make peace with your emotions when you’re already dead._ It’s easier to let the force flow through you unaltered when you’ve amputated everything from yourself that makes you who you are. There are very few force users left in the galaxy, Rey, and even fewer who are as talented as you. I can’t let you destroy that, at least not without realizing the choice you’re making.”

“What choice? I didn’t choose to be kidnapped in that temple.”

“Kidnapped? I didn’t know I could pull you through like that. I’ve never done it before. You can try to leave and run back to my uncle, but I _will_ stop you. The force brought you here for a reason.”

“Maybe the force brought me here to kill you.”

He shrugs. “It’s possible. If you stay then at least you’ll know.”

His food forgotten, Kylo Ren leaves her in his private rooms, shutting the door behind him.

***

Wex is still outside of Kylo’s rooms, silently facing the General. Kylo feels his features twist into a scowl at the prospect of dealing with Hux at this moment. He makes the hand-sign for “go” to Wex before facing the general himself.

“Do you use the force on these students of yours?” Hux asks, watching as Wex is relieved from his task.

“He’s deaf,” Kylo explains.

Hux’ eyebrows inch up his forehead, as if, after great mental effort, the idea must be re-shaped before it can be squared into his view of the world.

He closes his eyes for a fraction of a second before addressing Kylo. “It makes no matter to me if you bring these students with you onto this facility, but an hour ago I was informed that you brought that fugitive scavenger onto my base without turning her over to the Order’s custody. Ren, this outpost is a military operation, not a resource to facilitate your personal grudges—”

Kylo feels the thick rush of blood in his temples. “This is about far more than one traitorous stormtrooper. That girl was a student of Luke Skywalker. I brought her here through the force and I have convinced her to become a student of dark side.”

“She switches sides so easily?”

“When the truth is compelling, what other choice can she make,” Kylo states, flatly.

Hux is undeterred. “I will not have this fugitive given a position of honor within this regime while she is paraded around in front of my troops. They must know that defecting, or assisting another in defection, will result in swift, certain punishment.”

“I don’t intend to train her here. We’ll be leaving the base within the next standard cycle.”

Kylo steps around Hux as quickly as the space permits. His back to the general he hears, “Leaving for where, Ren?”

“Somewhere cold.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wex is inspired by/borrowed from Theon Greyjoy's squire in A Song of Ice and Fire.


	4. Chapter 4

Rey steps out of Kylo’s shuttle, her gloved hand holding her cloak tighter around her shoulders. A blast of cold air rakes over her skin as she descends the landing ramp, following Wex and Kylo’s purposeful strides toward a stone fortress. The high walls, outfitted with cloaked figures on the battlements, are like an image taken from one of the far-spun tales that got passed around by traders at Niima Outpost. 

Rey cranes her neck to decipher who is guarding the facility, wondering if the figures are stormtroopers or some other force, some group of men and women more like Kylo. She fails to get a clear look before they’re walking beneath a heavily fortified gate, the durasteel grating closing behind them. Turning, she sees black uniformed men—guards, Rey realizes—bowing their heads in deference to Kylo. Each guard holds a vibrolance in their gloved hands. 

Beneath her cloak, Rey is comforted by the weight of her saber clipped to her belt. She had expected to have her weapon taken from her before she’d woken up at the First Order base, but Kylo had left it with her. _It must be some trick of the dark side _, Rey thinks, her mouth turning into a frown.__

__The interior of the fortress is a blend of old, rough-cut stone and transparasteel, with durasteel support columns and security panels at every doorway and entrance. Through open doorways and windows into the main keep Rey sees the evidence of activity: robed figures in their chambers, kneeling on the flagstones in meditation, or men and women training in the frigid keep with melee weapons._ _

__Their party of three reaches a corridor that branches off in several directions. Kylo stops, making eye contact with Wex and performing some motion with his hand. Rey has never seen the hand-sign before but she is certain that the boy is being dismissed. A prickle of uncertainty blooms in her stomach—now it is just the two of them._ _

__“Follow me.”_ _

___What else could I possibly do?_ Rey thinks, but she holds her tongue and complies._ _

__They walk in the opposite direction of Wex, the companion that Rey appreciated more than she realized. During their flight from the base Rey, too, had tried to meditate while Kylo piloted the ship. Wex is a student of Kylo’s, she knows, and despite her inability to communicate with the boy as Kylo can she feels a keen level of understanding between herself and the teenager. The force is almost as much of a mystery to her as it was on Starkiller Base, a presence that she’s learned to feel and observe but rarely has control of. Knowing that there are other students, that it is not her solitary burden to decode the bizarre abilities that have awoken inside of her, makes Rey feel less alone in the universe._ _

__Kylo stops in front of a heavy wooden door. He opens it with a pull on the metal handle, not a swipe from his palm over a scanner or a thumbprint reader, but a real door-handle. Rey brushes her fingers over the grooves of the wood as she follows him inside, wondering if the wood and stones that make up this fortress have memories they can share with her._ _

__“You will sleep here,” Kylo says, lighting the room with a wave of his hand. The chamber is outfitted with electric light panels, similar to what she’s seen on ships or the First Order’s Star Destroyers, but the room has a hearth and a fire place like Luke’s cottage on Ach-To._ _

__“What is this place?” she asks, taking in the narrow bed and the stoneware pitcher of water that’s left on the rough-hewn bedside table. The furnishings are meant to be sparse, but this little cell is still more luxurious than the AT-AT she’d lived in on Jakku._ _

__“The citadel of the Knights of Ren.”_ _

__Rey’s wonderment abates some. Shivering under her cloak, she crouches down by the fire, arranging the logs and kindling, using the piece of flint on the mantelpiece to strike a fire. The sparks catch and grow into flames._ _

__“I have business here that will last several standard cycles. You will sleep in this room. You will not attempt to escape. You will observe the other knights or meditate with Wex.”_ _

__Rey stares at him, her hands held out in front of her to the fire. It’s bitterly cold on this planet and, despite her gloves, the warmth from the flames is not enough to return feeling to her fingers._ _

__“Am I your student now?” she asks, watching him from the corner of her eye._ _

__Kylo takes a step in her direction. Rey does not move, remaining still in front of the hearth, his height forcing her to crane her neck upward. In this light, she can see that his brown eyes are edged in deep gold._ _

__“We’ll see,” he says, the fire burning warmer as he draws near._ _

__He steps away from the hearth, ordering, “Get some sleep, scavenger.”_ _

__***_ _

__Rey wants nothing more than to follow Kylo’s instruction and drift off, but in this strange place her mind refuses to quiet. The stone room she’s been placed in has no windows or natural light, probably to keep her from attempting to escape, and she can’t help the little urge in her stomach that’s begging her to creep out of this chamber and explore._ _

__Rey throws the covers off herself and pulls on her warm clothes: wool-lined leggings, her thickest tunic, leather belt and saber, woolen socks, knee-high leather-soled boots, and her outer cloak lined with dove-gray rabbit fur. Rey shoves her gloves into her pockets in case she has need of them, but she prefers to be able to feel things freely with her hands, a leftover trait from her days as a scavenger._ _

__She tries to edge open her door but the old metal hinges groan loudly. Rey inwardly cringes at the sound and closes the door behind her as quickly as possible. There is hardly any light in the corridor, and Rey reaches into her pocket for a glowrod. Its blue illumination makes the path in front of her look frozen, as if the frigid citadel is truly made of ice and not rock and durasteel._ _

__Her leather-soled boots are silent on the flagstones. Rey peers around the corner before she turns to the main corridor. She remembers walking this way earlier with Kylo and Wex, remembers watching the other Knights train in the yard with their melee weapons while guards looked down from their upraised position on the battlements. Rey has no desire to test the limits of the citadel guards at this time—she has no doubt that, lightsaber or not, the guards to the fortress have orders from Kylo to prevent her escape._ _

__Whenever she thinks of leaving Kylo Ren she feels a vague rush of anxiety, like she’s been thrown into the currents of Ach-To and must flail around in the waves or drown. _Where could I go, even if I were to escape this planet?_ Rey wonders, holding the glowrod aloft. She walks the most heavily-traveled corridor, noting the absence of any signs or markers to identify the rooms, peering into the doorway of a chamber that looks like it’s full of actual, physical books, scrolls, and bound piles of flimsy. _ _

__Her mouth agape, Rey takes a few steps inside. There are hardwood tables placed in between the stacks, with lanterns placed at each table. Rey lights one and powers down her glowrod. The lantern casts the room into a warm, yellow glow, like the light of the fire in her little stone room. Rey approaches the shelves and turns her head sideways, trying to read the titles on the spines. It is rare to see actual, physical books, Rey has only ever seen some traders with them at Niima Outpost, and never as an item to sell to the on-worlders of Jakku. No, the traders who carried books as cargo usually dealt in historical artifacts, sometimes selling Imperial weapons to collectors, sometimes delivering antiquities to far-flung dealers._ _

__Out of the corner of her eye she sees a flutter of movement and she turns, nearly jumping out of her skin at the sight of Wex, who is holding both his hands palm-up in appeasement._ _

__Rey relaxes at the sight of him. She has yet to meet any of the other Knights of Ren, and having a confrontation with one of them in this musty room in the dead of night is not how she’d like to start._ _

__Frowning, she asks, “What are you doing here?”_ _

__Rey learned quickly after meeting him that Wex could read lips. Only thirteen, she had seen something of herself in his determined intelligence, in his sheer resourcefulness. Wex takes a step closer to her and holds up his right hand in the K symbol, holding the letter K over his chest—that’s the sign-name Wex has for Kylo—and then he makes another motion that she can’t decipher._ _

__She shakes her head and places her hand on his arm. Kylo can speak with Wex through the force simply by looking at him, adept as he is with mind-reading, but Rey needs some extra tactile feedback. Placing her hand on Wex’ arm gives her the sensory connection she needs._ _

___Follow you, I must_ , he thinks. _Kylo’s order_._ _

___He trusts you_ , Rey replies. Nodding to the bookshelves that tower over them, she asks, _What are these?__ _

___Archives. History of the Sith, the Jedi, the Empire, the Force._ _ _

__Rey nods. For most of her life she’s heard “the Force” referred to as a myth, or a religion that some small villages on Jakku are devoted to, with only a few of the older scavengers confessing tales to her of the Jedi Order, at least what they knew of it. Some of the less scrupulous traders at Niima Outpost used to share drinks in one of Jakku’s only cantinas and make toasts to “Lord Vader,” to the good old days of the Empire, when the rules were certain and there were credits to be made off of Imperial contracts. The New Republic, with all its wealth and promised stability, never seemed to reach the Outer Rim, and so bosses like Plutt or the smugglers that stopped through at Niima found ways to earn credits in their lawless band of worlds despite the instability._ _

__Rey pulls several books from the shelves, piling them on the table with the lantern and flipping through the pages, her fingers chilly. Wex lights a fire in the hearth as she tries to make sense of the High Galactic alphabet that the text is written in. She understands the words in front of her, but it’s slower going than reading in Aurebesh. Sighing, Rey flips through more pages of the book. Its choice of alphabet should have been a sign of how useful the information would actually be—it’s a memoir by a Jedi Master from the Old Republic. The book contains very little discussion of the force, with most of the passages devoted to the Master’s accomplishments among the Jedi Council._ _

__The hour creeps later and later as Rey opens different books, pulling them from the shelves at random, wondering if there is any insight to be gained from histories of long-dead force users, colored as they are by the self-importance of the author._ _

__Rey slumps over the table, her chin held up by her palm, her eyelids weighed down. Breathing in the smell of aged parchment, she rests her head on the book in front of her, sleeping among the stacks._ _

__She wakes to a firm grip on her shoulder, her cheek stuck to one of the pages of the book she was reading when she fell asleep. Rey looks up and sees Kylo, unmasked, as he often is around her, she realizes._ _

__The corner of his mouth is lifted in what passes for a smile with Kylo Ren._ _

__“Learn anything useful?” he asks._ _

__Wex had fallen asleep as well, Rey realizes. The thirteen-year-old is asleep on the floor, his cloak covering him like a blanket, one of the leather-bound books open under his head like a pillow. She covers her mouth in embarrassment—she had assumed that the boy would eventually tire of reading and go to his own bed. Rey had not realized that he took his orders to follow her so seriously._ _

__“Not really,” she confesses._ _

__Withdrawing his hand from her shoulder, his _ungloved_ hand, Rey notices, his hands appearing larger than normal, pale as they are against his dark clothing. It’s as if, the longer she’s around him, the more his dark side persona is stripped away, from his harsh mask to the leather gloves she always sees him in. This Kylo Ren, the one waking her in the archives, looks congruent with the citadel, with his self-made lightsaber and long hair. He looks like he belongs in this fortress with the other knights, juxtaposed by new and old._ _

__“Would you like to?” he asks, one of his eyebrows raised._ _

__“Would I like to learn what?” Rey counters._ _

__“Learn something worth knowing,” Kylo replies, flicking the tome in front of her closed._ _

__“Yes,” she confesses._ _

__Pure winter light is streaming through the panes of what looks like real glass, the squares colored by some artist to form a design in the window. The colors are pure, vibrant—mesmerizing in the way that so many things in their galaxy are, at least the small parts of it she’s seen._ _

__“Come with me.”_ _

__Rey follows Kylo, both of them tiptoeing around Wex’ sleeping form. He leads her to a chamber off of the main archives, the door equipped with a thumb-scanner and a panel with a security code. Kylo types in a six-digit number and the durasteel door slides open._ _

__As soon as Rey is over the threshold the door whooshes closed behind her, breezing air over the back of her neck. The room they are in is just as large as the stacks of the archives, but instead of bookcases there are transparasteel display consoles. In each display case is a small object, each of them unique, some shaped like a cube, others taking the form of a pyramid. Some of the objects are covered with jewels, some shine with metal leafing, others look so fragile she fears a touch by human hands would cause them to crumble from the contact._ _

__Rey freezes in her observation when she sees that one palm-sized pyramid has the same angular engravings as the abandoned temple on Ach-To, as the ruins where the force ripped her away from Luke and hurled her into the dusty chambers with Kylo Ren._ _

__“Kylo, look,” she breaths, pointing to the engraved pyramid, her eyes raking over the silvery sheen to the markings on its exterior._ _

__“Do you want to open it?” he asks, unable to conceal the edge of reckless excitement to his voice, as if her approval will actually influence his decision._ _

__Biting her lower lip, Rey looks to him before asking, “What will it do?”_ _

__“These are holocrons,” he explains. “Each was made by a powerful force-user. They hold the imprint of the maker—and knowledge of the force.”_ _

__Rey nods. Against her better judgment, she opens the transparasteel case before looking to Kylo._ _

__His eyes maintaining contact with her, Kylo reaches inside and picks up the engraved pyramid with his naked hand._ _


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Letholda” is my take on the name [Letholdus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letholdus), the name of the first Christian knight over the walls of Jerusalem in the First Crusade. 
> 
> [Inspiration for Letholda](https://bokunosekai.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/the-lee-woman.jpg)
> 
> [Cassock and cotta](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Death_of_St_Bede_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_16785.jpg)
> 
> You guys can also check out my tumblr [here](http://lunaplath.tumblr.com)

Kylo’s hand touches the surface of the pyramid and something inside of Rey shivers, deep in her spine, like a ripple of electricity has just traveled up her limbs through the soles of her feet. The silvery cast to the symbols on the holocron shimmers and reflects hints of darker colors. She looks up from the object to study Kylo, who is watching her unabashedly.

“Do you feel it?” he asks, taking her hand and lacing it with his own, the pyramid trapped between their two palms.

Rey moans aloud, unable to keep her mouth closed. The energy radiating from the holocron rushes through her like an amplification of her own pulse, her blood pounding in her ears. Her legs wobble beneath her and she slumps against Kylo’s chest, dizzy and winded, her head pillowed against him as a slow exhale drags past his lips. The tangible pressure from the pyramid is disorienting but _strong_ , like the full power of the force is clouding around the two of them, bathing them in its presence. 

The euphoric energy seems to be affecting him, too, from what Rey can see. His arm around her, Kylo angles them both to the floor in his disorientation, the curtain of his dark hair enveloping both of their faces. Every doubt or fear has been pushed from her head, prickly thoughts ( _he killed Han, he’ll kill you too if you get in his way_ ) squashed under its weight, a liquid, sinuous warmth rolling through her limbs—but Rey has no doubt that this energy is not of the light side. Her heart in her throat, Rey reaches forward, her hand shaking, and brushes the pads of her fingers over Kylo’s lips.

His dark eyes close and she can feel the vibrations of a low sound through her fingertips. Kylo takes one of her fingers between his teeth and bites, his bare hand clutching hers, making Rey shudder through her chest and down to her hips.

It’s that nip from Kylo’s teeth, the flare of pain along her skin, that wakes her up enough to take the pyramid from their enclosed hands and place it gently on the floor.

Abruptly, the steady thrum of heady, electric energy dissipates. Rey takes a breath of rapidly cooling air, lightheaded and curling further into Kylo’s chest, her fingers hooked into his shirt like claws.

“What was that,” she gasps, breathing heavily.

“I don’t know,” he confesses, looking down at her, her body stretched out over his like a pliant kitten.

His eyes look more honest to her in that moment than ever before, with vibrant streaks of golden yellow among the brown.

“It felt the same as in the temple,” he rambles, never looking away from her, his hands lightly brushing her hair out of her face. Fly-aways have come loose from her three buns and he is not shy about smoothing them against her temples. 

“I…I wasn’t afraid this time, it felt…different. I couldn’t control it,” she mutters.

Her gaze drifts to the small, glittering pyramid that rests on the flagstones. “Do you know anything about it?” Rey asks.

“Normally they open,” Kylo explains. “A holo appears, the image of the person who made it, and they teach everything they knew about the force, they share knowledge.”

“Does this one open?”

“You want to open it?” he asks, wearing a look that Rey can’t identify, his expression somehow both guarded and expectant. 

_Yes_. “I want to know what’s inside. It’s like I _must_ know, like I’ll just explode if I don’t. “

Kylo sits up, sliding her body into his lap, and Rey is suddenly very conscious of her movements, of how close she is to Kylo Ren. For the fifteen or so years that she lived on Jakku she hardly ever felt the touch of another human, and being this close to Kylo, being able to feel the heat of his form against hers, being able to identify the smoky tones to his scent, sends her reeling. Rey feels her stomach soar, like her body has suddenly gone weak.

He uses the force to levitate the holocron back into its cupboard, making a point not to touch its surface with his bare hands.

Rey climbs off him and stands, forcing herself not to think about the flecks of gold in his eyes, or the way he smells, or the undertow of energy that pushed her beneath its yoke and made her behave so strangely. Had she really touched Kylo’s lips with her hands? And he’d _bitten her_ , what could that possibly—

“We should leave,” he says, running his fingers through his hair and pushing it out of his face. Rey wonders how Kylo keeps it from running wild under his helm.

She looks to him, her mouth poised to ask a question, but she doesn’t get a chance to ask before he leaves the chamber, the holocrons glinting in the corner of her eye.

***

Rey follows Kylo through the halls of the citadel, feeling like her mind is slow to wake from the stupor the holocron cast around them both. She shakes her head to clear it, trying to force her senses to return to her, feeling like the floor is tilted, like the halls of the citadel have been upended beneath her feet.

He leads her into a large chamber with vaulted ceilings. There are several robbed figures kneeling at an alter, some on their knees in meditation, others facing alcoves with statutes or candles that burn with strangely colored flames. Rey draws a few steps closer to Kylo when she sees a gaunt, pale man with his eyes rolled back into his head, only the whites of his eyes visible. 

“Some of them take spice to help with meditation,” Kylo says flatly. 

The figure he approaches wears a dark cassock and cotta, a woman on her knees in front of an altar so large it wouldn’t have fit inside of Rey’s AT-AT. She remembers seeing similarly dressed members of the Church of the Force at Niima Outpost, men and women from Tuanul in their impractical robes. Here, in this snowy citadel, the woman’s religious garb doesn’t look so out of place. Her hair is long and chestnut brown, freely draping over her shoulders, parts of it streaked with white and gunmetal gray.

“Kylo Ren,” she says, placing one hand on the marble altar to steady herself as she stands.

“This is Letholda Ren, First Acolyte to the Supreme Leader,” Kylo says, introducing her.

Making eye contact with the woman, Rey is taken aback at how direct her gaze is, the gesture imbibed by the force.

“You are Kylo’s student,” she says, flicking here eyes over Rey's form, then back to her face.

To Kylo, she says, “It is a shame you have taken this girl as one of your own, the acolytes could use one as gifted as her.”

Letholda inclines her head for the both of them to follow her. The heavy smell of incense grows weaker as they leave the large chamber, the murmurs of the other acolytes dimming in Rey’s ears. She follows Kylo into a room that is practically cozy, with a fire already stoked and richly woven rugs covering the flagstones.

Rey stands facing the flames, her hands held palm-out, absently listening while Kylo and Letholda talk.

“…Wex will stay with you, he should learn from your people before training as a knight.”

“You’ve decided not to take the boy with you?”

“Her training will take some time. And focus.”

“Does the Supreme Leader know of your plans?” she asks. Something cold unfurls in Rey’s stomach when she hears that question.

“He knows I mean to take an apprentice,” Kylo says, his tone clipped.

“It makes no matter to me whether you take the girl or the boy,” Lotholda replies evenly. “But choose wisely. When will you be leaving?”

“Tomorrow, at first light. I’ve instructed Eris Ren to join General Hux on Ryloth.”

“I approve. The Twi’leks will respond well to seeing that one of their own has risen so high in the First Order.”

“You don’t think she’s too inexperienced?” Kylo asks.

 _Who is this woman whose advice he considers so closely?_ Rey wonders. From what Finn had told her of the First Order, Rey thought that all the Knights of Ren were unwaveringly loyal to the Supreme Leader, operating at his beck and call, but listening to the way Kylo and Lotholda make decisions so independently, without outside input, calls all of her assumptions into flux.

Rey mulls over the question Lotholda asked about her, about whether the Supreme Leader knew that Kylo had taken her as a student. _Has he not told his master about finding me through the force?_ she wonders. Rey turns her back to the fire, letting the other half of her body warm herself while she tries to think of what motivation Kylo could have for keeping her training a secret. If he knew of her presence, would this Supreme Leader wish to train her instead? Was Kylo disobeying an order by not telling him—and what could possibly motivate him to disobey his master merely for her?

“Now,” she hears, “tell me where you found this student.”

Rey looks at the two of them, her voice quiet at first. “The force took me from the temple,” she confesses.

Lotholda’s hands press together, her fingers forming a steeple, her elbows braced on the arms of her chair. “The force took you from a Jedi Master and delivered you to the Master of the Knights of Ren,” Lotholda corrects. 

The woman speaks as if the force is a living, thinking entity that has a will of its own, like that entity reached out of the ether and gave her to Kylo at a pre-determined moment.

“You don’t believe me?” Lotholda asks.

Rey opens her mouth to reply, to apologize, to say something in return, but Lotholda cuts her off, her steely eyes boring into her.

“One day you will be forced to draw blood in this conflict, girl. You will be shoved to one side or the other by the will of the force, and you will be grateful to know what you’ve gotten yourself into and what you must face in return.”

Mutely, Rey nods. Kylo thanks Lotholda for her input while the woman’s eyes mercilessly peer into her. Rey follows him out of the First Acolyte’s room, her words stinging Rey’s skin as fiercely as the flames in the grate.

***

The sky is turning the faintest shade of pink when they depart from the citadel. Standing in the keep, surrounded by the rough-hewn battlements, Rey is shocked to see Kylo leading two horses by the bridle, each of them wearing a saddle and packed bags. 

It is the first time Rey has ever seen a horse in person. She feels momentarily dwarfed by the height of the shaggy animal, standing out of range of its hot breath.

“Are we taking them with us?” 

“Yes,” Kylo replies, stroking the face of one of the horses, its fur off-white with flecks of black and gray. Rey reaches out her gloved hand, letting the other horse, this one walnut brown, brush its large mouth over her palm, searching for food. 

“The journey down the mountain is too steep without them,” he explains, handing her the reins of the solid brown mount. “Everything you’ll need is already packed. Let’s go.”

“Kylo, how do I—”

“Here,” he offers, showing her how to put the correct leg in the stirrup and lifting her form into the saddle. Rey is surprised by how effortlessly he lifts her in place. On top of the horse, the keep of the citadel looks different, the altered vantage-point changing her impression of the fortress. 

Kylo swings onto his mount much more gracefully than herself ( _and where did he learn how to ride horses?_ she wonders) before the guards are opening the gates to the citadel and they are departing through the fortified entrance. Rey feels the horse’s back shift underneath her, her balance off-center as she moves from side to side while the animal shifts its weight. She does her best to mimic Kylo and sit up straight, hoping that she won’t be thrown from the saddle before they even descend the mountain. 

Rey spots six, seven, no, eight guards on the battlements watching them exit. It occurs to her that she knows nothing about this planet’s geography, nothing about its wildlife, nothing about how to survive in such cold temperatures. She’d grown up in the dessert and spent only a few months with Luke. Even then, Ach-To was mainly a planet of water. This—the mountains, the trees, the snow—couldn’t be more alien to her.

“That’s why I brought you here,” Kylo says.

Rey nearly jumps out of her seat. She’d been so mesmerized by the contrast of the white snow on the dark, rocky peaks in the skyline that she hadn’t thought to guard her mind. 

“You brought me here because it’s strange to me?” Rey asks.

“The way of the dark side is the art of the struggle. Pain, discomfort, adversity—they are useful tools for these initial lessons.”

A memory resurfaces, unbidden, and Rey’s stomach turns. She remembers Kylo slamming his fist into the bowcaster wound at his side for power, remembers the manic look in his eye as the force overtook him.

Had she not felt the same way yesterday, when the holocron turned her into a boneless pool of heady energy in Kylo’s lap? Her faculties beyond her own control in that rush of power?

His voice interrupts her thoughts. His horse walks alongside hers, Kylo's fair skin looking perfectly in place in this wooded landscape.

“We fixate on the struggle because it’s relationship with the force goes against our natural beliefs. People don’t expect strength to come from misery and suffering, they expect it to come from wholeness, from spiritual health—but those assumptions are wrong. Many students of the dark side unconsciously hold themselves back because they don’t think the force will come to them, they reach out for it half-heartedly, they think the pain of the trials will kill them. They give up out of fear, before truly giving the force a chance to answer their call.”

Rey watches him carefully, hardly paying any attention to her mount as the horses make slow progress down the rocky path before them. Bare trees reach above their heads, thick snow-clouds block out any direct sunlight, and Rey feels as though the sun is setting instead of rising, as if they are in a kind of twilight on this desolate planet.

“Why are you telling me this?” Rey asks.

“I need you to remember your pain, Rey. Remember that your family left you. Remember those years on Jakku. Don’t block it out. Don’t constantly try to be sweet and kind—no one is going to abandon you for showing what you’ve been through. You have to let yourself _really feel_ what’s inside of you or your command of the force will always be weak.”

Venomously, she thinks that if Kylo were within swinging distance she would reach forward and slap him. 

“That’s what I’m talking about!” he cries, turning his head sharply in her direction.

Her gloved hands ball into fists, her blood pounding in her ears. “You don’t know me!” she yells. “You’re so… _arrogant_. You think that because you have the force you know exactly what’s wrong with me—”

He veers his horse in front of hers, circling so their mounts are facing opposite directions. From this position it is simple for Kylo to reach forward and grab her arm, his other hand taking the reins of her horse, keeping both animals still.

His face inches from hers, he says, “I know what’s in your mind, Rey.”

Kylo’s brown eyes are flecked with gold, so bright in all this snow and ice, his hot breath ghosting over her skin, the two of them angry and entangled, just like on Starkiller Base. 

“You can’t hide from me,” he starts, but before Kylo can say another word Rey leans forward and presses her cold, chapped lips against his.

Everything is still for a moment. The horses don’t move, the wind is silent in her ears, and Rey’s hand on his jaw remains as steady as an anchor until he moans against her mouth and brushes his tongue between her lips.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO SORRY for being MIA for the past few months. I'm in my last year of law school and I also had a job this semester. I'm hoping that things will settle down now that finals are almost over so I can keep working on this fic. Thankfully, THERE ARE SEXY TIMES IN THIS CHAPTER.

The first day of their journey feels longer than Rey knows is possible. This planet—whatever name it goes by—has a short day cycle in the winter, and after many hours of riding on horseback the air is growing colder and the sky is taking on a golden hue through the snow clouds.

Kylo dismounts and she follows his lead, hobbling their horses and filling a metal pail with snow to melt. Kylo takes out his lightsaber and fells a dead tree, using the precise weapon to make quick work of the dry wood. The bags on their horses’ backs seem suspiciously light to Rey—how will they camp for the night with so few supplies? Kylo doesn’t ask her to aid him in any of the camp preparation, though she watches him all the same, her knowledge of survival limited strictly to the desert. 

The crackling, red beam of his lightsaber reflects off the snowy ground, reminding her of their fight on Starkiller Base, when she had nearly severed his hand and refused his offer to teach her. The symbolism of returning to the snowy terrain is not lost on her.

Kylo’s breath forms visible clouds as he works, his dark hair falling in his eyes as he makes a tepee with the chopped wood and bits of kindling. He holds the edge of his blade to the kindling, blowing on the flames that start to lick their way up the dry wood, smoke clouding the air above the growing fire.

Rey follows him through the trees, helping Kylo fell dead limbs of different sizes. She still doesn’t know how they’ll have shelter for the night, or how they’ll melt the show down into drinkable water, but the longer she watches him work the more relaxed she grows at the thought.

“Where did you learn to do all of this?” she asks, standing patiently, holding an armful of wood while he drives the end of a log into the ground, using the force to anchor the branch in the frozen soil. He braces it with rocks, repeating the process with another log nearly six feet away. Kylo continues the process of forming a low-ceilinged lien-to with sticks, debris, snow, and rocks. The open side of the lien-to faces the fire, which continues to flicker upward. 

Kylo pointedly does not answer her question. He takes the metal pail of snow and places it on a rock, sliding the stone practically into the fire itself. The snow melts quickly, after that. He takes a clay, hand-molded cup from one of the saddle bags, fills it with melted water, and silently hands it to her. Rey’s eyebrows creep upward when she sees the horses nosing tufts of grass from beneath the few inches of snow, content to root for the vegetation in the frigid weather.

She knows little about making camp in this type of climate, making her completely dependent on Kylo’s desire to share his knowledge. While he pulls a bedroll and furs from his pack, Rey drinks deeply, thinking that this cool glass of water tastes better than any drink she ever had on Jakku.

Rey crouches down next to Kylo, huddling in front of the fire beneath the lien-to. The arrangement is surprisingly warm, bringing feeling back into her fingers and the tip of her nose.

Over the crackle of the now-blazing fire, Kylo says, “My father taught me.”

***

They travel for three more days, with the promise of reaching actual, man-made shelter the following day. Each night Rey helps Kylo make camp, felling the dead trees they need to create a shelter, building a fire with the driest pieces of wood she can find, shivering under her sleeping fur while her master sleeps on, undisturbed by the weather. 

Kylo never lectures her on the best way to sit a horse or lash logs together to build a shelter, but she learns by imitation, watching the practiced motions of his hands, the efficient, almost peaceful way that he labors in the few daylight hours.

On the third evening, Rey tugs at Kylo’s sleeping fur and drapes it over herself as well, throwing her added fur over both of them for extra warmth. She is pressed between Kylo and the fire, she should be more than comfortable, but Rey can only soothe the chill in her bones by turning on her side and sliding her hands beneath his shirt. Kylo’s skin is practically searing beneath her fingers, his chest warm and muscled against her hands.

His dark eyes find hers. “C’mere.”

Kylo slides his arm around her waist, his bare hand finding its way underneath her tunic, his fingers spanning the length of her back. He tugs her against him until their bodies are flush, one of her legs tangles between his, her pelvis pressing into the hollow of his hips.

He sighs before closing his eyes, quickly finding sleep again, but Rey has to take several deep breaths before she is calm enough to relax in his arms. This close, she can feel everything, can feel the raised edge of the bowcaster scar long his chest, can feel the heavy weight of his body hardening against her hips. Rey uses the few breathing techniques she remembers Luke teaching her, attempting to slow her racing thoughts and dismiss her heated memory of covering Kylo’s mouth with her own on the first day of their journey.

That one unthinking act had unsettled her more than she cares to admit. Rey had never kissed anyone before she leaned forward and brought her halfway-numb lips to his. She hasn’t allowed herself to consider kissing him again, in truth, but Rey has dreamed of him every night since they started their descent down the mountain. She wonders if he knows of the physical, vaguely frightening dreams she has every night, if he can feel the strange ball of curiosity and terror that has coiled in her stomach.

In one dream she is strapped to the interrogation chair in the _Finalizer_. Kylo’s mask is off but he is still wearing his leather gloves as he slowly unties her belt, pulls at the wraps of fabric over her chest like he’s opening something delicate. In the dream, she can hear her breathing in her ears, her chest heaving. It’s not out of panic, but something else, something slung low in her belly that thickly curls up her spine. Kylo looks her directly in the eye and rips her breastband down the middle, leaving her bare beneath his gaze. Rey looks down and sees that there are no bindings on her wrists—she is not strapped into the interrogation chair—she never was.

“Do you always ruminate on your dreams?” Kylo rumbles, making her startle against him.

“Yes,” she answers quickly. “Sometimes. Usually when I’m trying to understand them.”

“You don’t understand this one?” he asks, shifting so he can look down at her in their cramped sleeping quarters.

Biting her lower lip, Rey shakes her head.

Patiently, he says, “You feel surprise by what you did. You’re afraid of your actions. You think I must have done something to make you think differently of me, but beneath that you know it’s not true. You know that you only reached out and took what you wanted.”

She is silent for a moment, her ears filled with the dying crackle of the fire at her back and Kylo’s soft breathing. Rey feels his hand brush over the expanse of her back, the edge of his fingers trailing over her ribs and then the underside of her breast.

His lips brushing the shell of her ear, Kylo whispers, “You want me to do the things you’re afraid to do. You want to learn how to be brave.”

Her breath in her throat, Rey turns her face upward, sighing as he kisses her, hard, his lips firm and knowing where hers had been daring yet uncertain. She opens her lips, the both of them breathing heavily as he cups her breast and pinches her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

Her voices cracks into a moan and he’s rolling her body underneath his, Rey’s hands sliding up to feel the steely planes of his back. She instinctively parts her legs and digs her nails into his skin as he brushes his tongue over hers, his lips hot against her mouth. Kylo hovers over her, sucking a kiss against her neck as she grinds her hips up against his, feeling the length of him through his leather trousers.

Kylo leans to one side, freeing his hand to slip beneath the waistband of her thick, wool leggings while he tugs her lower lip between his teeth. Rey almost asks him what he’s doing—she has never let a man touch her beneath her clothes, only her own hand. The men at Niima Outpost had always given her long, unflinching looks, one had even offered her twenty portions so he could watch her bathe while he touched himself. And then she feels Kylo’s fingers brush over _that spot_ and she’s crying into the dark, cold air. 

He toys with her folds and slips his fingers inside her, slick and easy, her wetness clinging to him as he circles her nub, her body quivering next to his. Rey bites down on his shoulder, her legs twitching while she rocks her hips against his hand. Kylo circles that spot more quickly, pressure building in the base of her spine until it jerks through her limbs, tears running down her face. Feeling is hand between her legs is more intense than she had expected, making the veins in her head pulse until her ears are ringing. 

“ _Ah_ ,” she cries, his hand still working between her legs, drawing it out, the pleasure so intense it’s disorienting.

Kylo’s touch slows and then he’s rubbing her shoulders with his big hands, digging out the knotted muscle between her vertebrae. The air between them is thick and humid with their shared breath. Gasping, Rey is surprised that there is still snow on this planet, that the temperature of her body hasn’t melted it all.

He presses her body to his, holding her so tightly that she can’t free her arms to touch him. Kylo’s breathing slows and before she can wonder if she’s supposed to reciprocate, if there’s some exchange that must take place between them that her inexperience has not prepared her for, he’s fallen asleep with his face buried in her disheveled hair. Spent, Rey huddles closer to him and closes her eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are the best!!!!! Thank you for all the awesome comments last chapter! 
> 
> Be warned: we are definitely earning our E rating at this point.
> 
> Reminding everyone that this fic is not fluffy at all. This chapter is dark af. Trigger warnings for emotional manipulation, violence, dom/sub. Typical dark side stuff.

When Finn first woke up in the Resistance med-bay, he’d been alone, attached to three different machines while his spine knit itself back together. He’d felt confused then, panic rising in his throat until he realized that he wasn’t with the First Order at all, but he wasn’t with Rey, either.

He hadn’t had much time to think on it before Poe ducked his head into the room, his face lighting up when he saw that Finn was conscious.

“Buddy, you’re awake!”

Those words had made Finn feel happier than he’d expected. Elated that at least someone good was still up and walking around in this galaxy.

Six months later, when Finn wakes up in the middle of the night with a knot in his gut that’s tying up his insides, he tosses the blankets off of himself and toes on his boots, throws on a thermal. He’s zipping up his jacket as Poe softly eases the door open to their shared barracks.

“You’re awake,” Poe says, his hair rumpled from his helmet, looking bleary-eyed at the late hour.

“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep,” he explains. 

“I don’t think I can either,” Poe says sheepishly. “Too keyed up. You want some caf?” 

Finn nods and follows his friend to the mess hall, each of them grabbing a tin mug and filling it with steaming caf. Poe gulps his down as is. Finn adds a dash of milk and follows his friend to a seat at one of the long benches. There are a few other people in the hall, most of them folks who work third shift while most of the base is sleeping. There’s always someone up and working, but the hall is quieter at this hour, better for talking.

“How was Ryloth?” Finn asks, blowing at the steam rising from his caf.

Poe runs a hand through his hair before shaking his head. “Not good. Some of the old timers thought we could make a difference if we tried to reach out, you know, make an effort to mend some old wounds with the twi’leks, but we were too late.”

“First Order?” Finn asked.

“The Knights of Ren.”

“Even worse,” Finn grimaced. 

“I don’t think I realized how many of them there were until now. For the longest time the Resistance thought it was mainly Kylo Ren, with maybe a few others beneath him, but General Organa thinks there may be hundreds.”

Before they can continue theorizing, Poe straightens up and greets the General herself.

“General,” he begins, courteous despite his worn appearance. Poe doesn’t get a chance to speak further, because General Organa has locked her eyes on Finn in a way that, strangely, reminds him of being inspected by Captain Phasma.

“Finn, come with me.”

Poe rises too, but the General dismisses him with a shake of her head.

“Not now, Dameron. Come on, Finn. He’s waiting.”

Finn gives Poe one last confused look, abandoning his untouched mug of caf on the table. 

“Who’s waiting?”

He’s had little reason to spend time with General Organa one-on-one, and the sudden necessity leaves Finn bewildered. 

“Luke. My brother, Luke Skywalker.”

They’re walking at a brisk pace down a half-lit service hangar, practically jogging through a maze of back doors as Finn feels his eyes bug out to twice their normal size. 

“Are you serious? _The_ Luke Skywalker? _Here_?”

General Organa finally stops at a small meeting room that Finn has never had reason to enter before. The type of place usually occupied by parties debriefing the head strategists on return from a mission. Finn doesn’t go on many missions, with most of his time spent training other Resistance members how to engage in physical combat with Stormtroopers. 

The General punches in a nine-digit access code with precise movements, and then Finn is following her inside, blinking his eyes against the bluish glare from a shimmering holographic map of the galaxy. He feels the rush of air on the back of his neck as the door automatically slides shut behind him, his stomach dropping to his knees as a pair of laser-blue eyes connects with his own.

“Finn, right? I’m Luke.”

His mouth is suddenly very dry. “I-I know who you are. Everybody does.”

The General is standing behind her chair, hands braced against its back, her brow marred with worry. 

“Why don’t you sit down?” she suggests, pressing a few buttons on the controls to dim the bright blue map hovering in front of them.

“Yeah, sure,” Finn says absently, a glimmer of panic beginning to flutter through his veins. 

Why would the General ask him to a meeting with herself and Luke Skywalker, savior of the galaxy from the Galactic Empire? After a lifetime in the First Order, Finn instinctually knows that any attention from higher ups is usually a sign of impending disaster, his stomach sinking past his knees as General Organa takes a deep breath before looking to her brother.

“What’s this about?” Finn asks cautiously, looking to each of their faces. 

“Rey has disappeared,” the General says, the words sounding like indecipherable Wookie-speech in his ears. It takes Finn a full ten seconds before his brain can even decode what’s been spoken to him.

“There was an accident,” Luke explains, his blue eyes communicating a silent, private kind of pain that Finn can practically feel across the table. “Rey was studying with me. We visited an ancient Jedi ruin, a place that I had only just discovered, I didn’t fully understand the type of place it was, or how the force worked there, and then—“

“Is she dead?” Finn croaks, his chest constricting under the weight of his own fear.

“I don’t know,” Luke says, plainly bereaved. “I don’t think so, but I can’t rule out that possibility. Truthfully, I think she was transported through space to another location, another temple. But there must have been someone to initiate it, to tip the balance of the force in the other direction,” he muses. 

“We know that you and Rey were close before she went to train with Luke,” General Organa intones. “Luke and I were wondering if you had heard anything from her, messages, communications of any kind. We thought she might try to contact you if she had the chance.”

Absently, Finn notices that his hands are shaking. “What other location?” he asks. “Who else in the galaxy could have done something like this?”

Luke and the General share a meaningful look, one that makes Finn wonder if the siblings can communicate without words.

“You know,” Finn guesses. “You already know where she is.”

“Not where,” Luke corrects. “But who she’s with—yes. I’m sure.” 

Finn stares into Luke’s pale blue eyes, his mind screaming _tell me_ , wondering why the two of them wouldn’t want him to know—

“We believe that Rey is with Kylo Ren,” General Organa says delicately, and that’s when his lips go numb.

“No,” Finn moans. “ _Again?_ ” 

“Have you heard anything from Rey? Any messages at all?” Luke asks.

Finn shakes his head, feeling like he’s tripped down an entire staircase, remembering that robed, masked monster carrying Rey’s unconscious form onto an Upsilon Class command shuttle on Takodana. 

“I’m going to try and find her,” Luke explains, but before he can get out another word Finn interrupts him, his mind made up.

“Let me help you.”

**

Rey can tell when they draw closer to the settlement. The horse that’s held her steady this whole journey begins ignoring her directions, as if he knows the way better than she. Surrounded by trees, there is no warning that the cluster of buildings is there until Rey and Kylo are upon them.

There is a sunken pit-house with a thatched, gabled roof. Separately, Rey sees a square building, perhaps only two stories in height, with wide barn doors. A stable for the horses.

Following Kylo, she dismounts and walks to the barn alongside the sturdy mare that bore her down the mountain slopes. To open the barn doors Kylo has to pull with both hands, his back straining against the ice that has frozen the metal hinge. He works the door open with an almighty shriek of ice snapping, but the horses aren’t fazed—they find their stalls without direction.

Rey helps Kylo remove the leather saddle-bags and the horse tack she has learned to care for during their journey. She helps him carry the bags across the yard, carefully following his footsteps down the icy slope to the entrance of the pit-house.

The interior is supported by heavy wooden beams, walled with stone and mortar. She tracks snow onto the slate floor, watching while Kylo deposits the bag of supplies by the fire-pit in the middle of the main room. There’s an empty metal pot on a long chain hanging from the ceiling, and Kylo removes it, takes it outside and fills it with snow to be heated. Rey is struck by how easy it is to have access to water on this planet.

Off from the main room there is a smaller area, almost a cupboard, with extra furs and linens, cooking utensils, and tools. Opening a narrow door, Kylo shows her the cellar, shows her the neatly stacked pile of dry wood, the dried meat, the stores of preserves and canned food.

“Do your Knights come here often?” Rey asks, following him up the narrow stairs from the cellar, her arms full of chopped, dried wood for the fire.

“Yes. Many students come here to earn the title of Knight.”

“Is that why you’ve brought me to this place?”

She places the wood in the fire pit, adding a handful of dried pine-needles as kindling. She feels his eyes on her as she takes flint and striker from her pocket, his attention a crackling, physical thing, as rumbling and unstable as his lightsaber. Rey finds that her hands are shaking as the flame catches the dried needles.

Crouching down on his haunches, Kylo looks at her over the flames. “You willingly followed me to this place—no one brought you here with a saber to your neck. Remember that. You chose to learn about the force beside my apprentice, and if you make it through this training you will have earned that position.”

On his hands and knees, Kylo crawls around the fire pit, his eyes pinning her in place as he casts long, distorted shadows across the walls.

“You dreamed about me and pulled me into your bed, Rey. Is that what you want me to teach you?”

The fire has grown in size, its flames so close she can feel its heat fanning up her side. Rey feels something drop in her stomach, feels that familiar, twisting ache between her legs. She fists her hands in her cloak, fighting the intrusive desire to thread her fingers through Kylo’s hair and drag him to her.

He has no such hesitancy. Even on his knees, he towers over her, his shoulders blocking out the light from the fire. Kylo’s hand finds her face, his thumb tracing the apple of her cheek, fear and anticipation prickling through her skin until it burns, a sweet ache that makes her chest constrict.

“This is your first lesson,” he breathes, bringing his lips to hers.

***

Rey enshrines her memories of tenderness with Kylo Ren, reminds herself that he is the first man to kiss her, to touch her with his bare hands and bring her to pleasure, because those moments begin to take on an air of dream-like unreality in comparison to the brutal absolutism of her training. She spends months doing hard, physical labor in the freezing weather, sometimes for a practical purpose, sometimes for no purpose at all. Kylo tells her nothing about the force, he merely watches her progress, working alongside her without comment, shaming her inability to keep up with his competence. Rey hardens herself, lifts the edge of her chin when he looks at her, as if to prove that she’s not weak, she’s strong enough to do this, though whether she’s convincing herself or Kylo she can’t say.

In only her riding leathers and her wool tunic, Rey stands in the snow, feeling each gust of wind like the scalding edge of a weapon. She shivers in place, hugging herself with her arms, watching Kylo’s expression twist in disapproval. 

“Stop,” he barks, yanking her arms away, forcing her to feel every cruel gust of freezing air.

Rey grits her teeth, clenches her jaw against the pain, the skin in her fingers loosing feeling, each cell in her hand shuddering until it ceases to function. His hands dig into her shoulders, shaking her narrow frame so forcefully that she nearly feels her spine come loose.

“ _Use the force!_ ” he growls, and she can’t take it, can’t stand here and feel this relentless pain while he stares at her with eyes that remind her of the terror of Starkiller. 

A feral sound rips its way out of her mouth and Rey _shoves_ , feeling the energy crack out of her like a clap of thunder. Kylo flies away from her, his figure slamming into the knarred base of a hardwood tree, the back of his head loudly smacking against the wood. Breathless, she watches him grunt and roll over onto his stomach, watches Kylo stagger to his feat. Blood drips from his nose in an obscenely red stream.

“Good,” he pants, his breath condensing in the freezing air. “Better.”

In her rush of fury, Rey didn’t even feel the cold.

***

She trains for months before Kylo will let her touch a lightsaber. He wakes her early, before the sun has fully risen, and forces her out into the snow without food or sufficient clothing. Rey learns to endure these punishments as she learned to endure Jakku. She learns to discipline her mind, this time without the delusion of hope. Rey knows that, here, on this planet, there will be no family arriving to save her, there is no Master Luke to smile tiredly and offer guidance. There is only Kylo Ren. There is only the cold. And all she has to protect herself, to survive in this hellish landscape, is the force.

Rey learns how to walk barefoot in the snow, marshalling energy to each individual cell, keeping herself whole while she disciplines her mind. _There is no suffering, there is only strength_ , she reminds herself, and somehow the words begin to take on meaning.

It is rare for Kylo to offer any comment on her progress, let alone encouragement. She learns to move the objects around her with her mind, stands still in concentration as she rolls a boulder up a snowy hill, a trickle of sweat beading down her brow. Kylo watches her with his arms crossed over his chest, whatever sense she normally has of his feelings cut off from her.

Some of his lessons are meant to frighten her, she knows. Many of them are meant to exhaust her, to add pressure to her mind until the effort becomes nearly unbearable, until she thinks she will collapse from the effort, that she will die in this place. 

Absurdly, she lives. 

Intellectually, Rey sees the value in this, but that observation is rarely enough to keep out all physical discomfort. Most nights she collapses into her bed, pulling the pile of sleeping furs over her and burying her face into the feather tick of the mattress. And each time she knows that, too early, before she can fully rest, Kylo will wake her and shove her—stumbling, her belly empty—into the cold with more instructions and no encouragement.

Rey begins to hate him.

The feeling is small at first, like the prick of a finger on a thorn, narrow and pointed, easily soothed. But each thorny wound begins to multiply until she is wracked with them, consumed by how much it hurts, how this is the man who killed Han Solo, who cut Finn to pieces, who dragged her here from her Master against her will. This is the man who finds pleasure in toying with her every day in the freezing weather, teaches her lightsaber forms until her body is past numb and aching, until her muscles quiver from weakness. Then he whacks her sharply with his practice saber, landing somewhere that would be lethal in a real fight. 

His practice blade digging sharply into her side, he says “You’re dead. Now get up.”

She endures. Each day her hatred grows until it is a real, living, thriving presence inside of her, until her muscles grow hard like marble, until her eyes hone in on him every moment that she’s awake, like a wolf staring down another predator in the night, waiting for the first flicker of movement until she springs forward. Rey remembers his hands between her legs and feels sick. How easily he made her feel wanted, how simple it was for him to press her underneath his frame and make her shudder into his mouth, uncaring of who this man truly is. 

She recalls how she kissed him on the first day of their journey, how he’d looked so tall and handsome on his speckled horse. He’s still handsome, even with that faded scar running across his face, but Kylo’s looks become less and less consequential to Rey. She begins to wonder if it would really be that hard to kill him on this barren, frozen planet. Could she steal one of the shuttles at the citadel? Would she be able to hide his body in a snow drift without Wex or any of the acolytes finding out?

Kylo lands a brutal hit to the side of her head, the tip of his training saber arching in the same pattern as the scar she gifted him with in Starkiller. It knocks Rey off her feet and sends her tumbling into the snow, the wind knocked out of her lungs, her teeth rattling in her gums. 

“You’re dead,” he says, bored, like her ineptitude is a chore he must dispense with.

It’s his tone that rakes over each little abrasion on her heart, that sends her nerves quivering with a rush of anger the likes of which Rey has never experienced before. The surge of emotion—of raw energy overflowing her spine and streaming through her body straight to her fingertips, to the soles of her feet—blocks out all thought. 

It is velvety, thick like tar, a wave of energy that’s practically ravenous. There’s a roaring in her ears and then she snaps forward like an animal.

Kylo’s eyes go wide in the moment before she grabs him. Rey tackles his six foot, three-inch frame and sends them both tumbling into the snow, her skin so hot she’s surprised the ice doesn’t melt away beneath her. He tries to wrestle his body on top of hers but she knees him in the gut and flips them over so she’s straddling him, her breath coming in hot gasps. Rey holds his arms above his head, his body like an insect pinned to a board, ready to be dissected. Kylo is straining against her command of the force but she overpowers him, letting the howling current of energy rush through her like a torrent in a bottle.

She can feel it—clear and dark and on fire—and Rey lets it fill her as she leans forward and slants her mouth against his.

Kylo moans beneath her, straining against the hold she has on him, needy, trying to arch forward as she rocks her hips against his. 

“I’m not doing this for you,” Rey pants, her hand diving under her tunic and cupping her own breast, feeling her nipple pebble beneath her fingers and tugging on it.

Practically whimpering, Kylo bucks his hips underneath her and Rey shudders, feels him thick and hard between her legs. A heady spike of arousal curls through her and she climbs off of him for a moment, strips her leggings away from her sweaty skin and plants her knees in the snow on either side of his hips. Rey reaches between her legs and feels herself, rubbing her finger over her clit while Kylo strains against the limits of her force hold. 

“ _Fuck_ , Rey,” he whines, panting, his lips parted while he watches her pump her fingers inside herself. 

She reaches for the laces of his trousers, not caring if she rips them apart in the process. The steady thrum of energy inside of her tells her to dig her nails into his chest, to rip out his heart and take it for herself, to absorb his energy as her own. Rey reaches for his cock and watches in fascination as Kylo squirms and pants, arching his hips while she inexpertly touches him. She’s never touched a man like this, never felt the odd mixture of firmness and velvety soft skin beneath her hands, but Rey learns by watching him, her lower lip between her teeth as she strokes the leaking moisture at the tip and rubs it down the rest of him. 

Kylo groans and balls his hands into fists. She rubs herself with her fingers and lines up his cock against her lips. Rey has never done this, but she’s seen girls with paying customers on Jakku, doing it in broad daylight in open-air tents while strangers passed them by.

She holds him there for several moments, watching Kylo’s face until he growls, “ _Yes_ , goddam it.”

Rey slides him inside of her and it’s easy at first, she’s wet and dripping all over him, until something in her rips and, maker, it hurts. She’d heard girls talk about it hurting but Rey didn’t realize how right they were. That energy inside of her flares up into a roar and then the pain dissolves like ether, leaving her deliciously full, her hips rocking against his, her body holding him inside her while Rey works herself up and down on top of him. 

Kylo’s jaw is clenched, his eyes boring a hole in her until she releases the hold on his arms and hears him groan deep in his chest, his head thrown back into the snow, hands finding her bare hips. He holds her close and rocks up, his back digging into the frozen ground and Rey keens, her eyes squeezing shut at the sensation. Kylo reaches between their bodies and circles her clit with his thumb, mercilessly rubbing her until she falls apart on top of him, gasping as her body clenches over and over. Rey feels pulses of energy wrack through her, feels Kylo roughly thrusting up into her while he pants into the cold air. 

She feels heavy and full, sated, looking down at him while the muscles in his neck bunch up. Kylo comes with his eyes closed, rutting into her so forcefully she can feel their hip bones banging against each other. He is loud, letting free a string of filthy curse words, weak and panting between her legs. Rey reaches forward and rubs his hair out of his eyes, presses her lips against his scar. He breathes heavily beneath her and wraps his massive arms around her upper body, caging them both in. 

Kylo kisses her, all soft and slow, his lips full and perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [exterior inspiration pic](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1lAg-vDHpnA/VqT_Y5u5qtI/AAAAAAAABjU/ujphdW11Hzo/s1600/MainPic.jpg)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [interior inspiration pic](http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/pix/eiriksstadir_interior_fire.jpg)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant for this chapter to be longer but I thought this was a natural stopping point. 
> 
> Just another reminder that this is a pretty dark story. If emotional manipulation/abuse is triggering for you this may not be the story you want to read. If violence or violent sex bothers you this may not be the story you want to read. If moral ambiguity is not your thing then this may not be the story you want to read.
> 
> I also want to THANK EVERYONE OMG FOR ALL THE AMAZING COMMENTS!!!!!! You guys are THE BEST!! I was really touched by the enthusiastic response to the last chapter, I am so glad everyone is enjoying this little fic. ~hugs to all~ If anyone wants to fangirl over reylo on tumblr, or if you guys ever want to know the status of chapters, [you can follow me on tumblr.](http://lunaplath.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also, I made a [moodboard](http://lunaplath.tumblr.com/post/154475002287/the-heat-flushes-through-her-skin-the-sun) for this fic. There is also an [ultra vires tag](http://lunaplath.tumblr.com/tagged/ultra-vires) on my tumblr.

Rey is huddled under a sleeping fur, her knees curled up against her chest. Wrapped in warmth and shielded from the harsh wind outside, she watches Kylo carve up a skinned rabbit, observes the firm, efficient way he cuts off pieces of fresh, pink meat. 

He adds cut up tubers and vegetables to the largest cooking pot they have in their little shelter, and Rey tries to keep her mouth from watering as he hangs it on a chain above the fire pit and the food inside begins to stew, filling the small space with the hearty smell of a hot meal.

Kylo cleans off his hands with a damp rag and holds them near the flames to dry. She is struck by how large his hands are, how large all of him is, his frame taking up so much space in the sunken hut that is their only shelter. He joins her on her sleeping pallet and brings the fur around both of their shoulders, sharing his body heat beneath the pelt. 

“You should rest,” he says simply, and Rey turns her head toward him so quickly she feels a sharp pinch in her neck from the abrupt action.

“What?” she asks, confused. 

It is hours later but they have hardly spoken since she tried to attack him, and succeeded, in a sense, in the snow. Her stomach lurches uncomfortably and Rey wonders what her punishment will be. He brought her here to teach her about the force, to show her how to control it, how to control herself, and Rey cannot help but think that she has failed miserably. 

When she was kneeling in the ice on top of him, pinning Kylo beneath her and rubbing her skin raw against his, she hadn’t maintained a shred of self-restraint. Her body had opened up to the force and it had rushed inside her like a river of boiling water, frothing and hungry and vicious. Rey tries not to color at the memory but there’s a part of her, a part that remembers Finn’s kind smile or Luke’s peaceful island, that is horrified by her actions. 

Looking down to avoid his gaze, Rey notices that there is blood staining the juncture between her legs, a dark red bloom that has soaked into her gray leggings. She is sore, her knees feel chapped from the snow, and her whole body feels like a wrung out dish towel. 

“You have completed your training. You deserve some rest,” he says evenly. 

“But…aren’t you going to punish me?” 

Kylo lets out a bark of laughter, loud and full of amusement, like a jackal. “Only if that’s what you want, girl.”

Rey frowns at him. “I don’t understand.”

“You stopped holding back,” he says simply. “You held on for a long time. Not many people would have sat there and taken abuse like that, day after day.”

She stares stubbornly at the floor, the hot lick of shame making her ribs contract and her skin burn. Kylo Ren has become something of a teacher to her, but she doubts he ever intended for their relationship to progress as she had forced it to. Rey remembers the shocked, awe-struck expression he’d worn when she shoved him down with the force and practically devoured his body, freezes it in her mind and wraps her heart around it. 

On Jakku, she had always been the one frantically trying to avoid being devoured—by animals, by the broken hulls of ships, by other men—and for the first time in her life Rey had felt like the powerful one. 

“You probably…” Rey swallows thickly. “You probably think I’m awful and disgusting for doing that to you.”

She could have just as easily slapped him, for how he reacts. Kylo grabs her face with his hand, strong enough to crush her jaw in his fingers, if he wants. Rey feels his hot breath against her face and fights to maintain that feeling of power, of control, even with her master holding her tightly in his grasp.

“Don’t ever think that,” he growls. “There’s nothing awful about who you are.”

Kylo roughly separates himself from her, rising to stir the contents of the pot above the fire. Her heart fluttering like a bird against her ribcage, Rey digs her nails into the palm of her hand, forcing herself to think, to watch the silent expanse of his broad back as he adds some salt and dried herbs to the food.

_There’s nothing awful about who you are_. Rey stares at him in silence for another minute, her lower lip between her teeth, thinking.

“You _enjoyed_ that,” she breathes out. “You liked me doing it to you.”

He drops the metal spoon into the cast-iron pot with a loud clang, abandoning the pretext of preparing their meal.

“Yes,” he says simply.

Kylo turns from the fire, steps closer. He’s kneeling in front of her balled-up form on the pallet. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do that with you?”

Not trusting herself to speak, Rey shakes her head, her breathing shallow. He reaches up and pulls at the cords of leather that hold her hair in three buns, tugging it free and running his fingers through it. 

She’s struck by the unreality of the situation. No one has ever touched her like this, or looked at her in this way—Rey feels like a leaf quaking in a gale of wind, like any second she might break off and get swept into a vortex, like she might crumble beneath the pressure. 

Kylo slants his mouth against hers and it feels so good it makes her toes curl. Rey closes her eyes, sighs into his mouth as he pushes her into the furs, his fingers tugging on the knot that holds her robe in place. She’s panting and he’s pulling away, looking down at her like the big bad wolf ready to eat his fill. 

This time, there is no molten power coursing through her, no wild energy to guide her movements. It’s just the two of them, her heart stuttering while she tries to clench her thighs together to relieve the tension. Kylo touches her breast through the band around her chest, his golden-brown eyes watching her, cat-like, hungry. Rey curls her arms around his neck and pulls him on top of her, feeling his broad shoulders cage her in, the hot press of his body against hers making heat spike through her belly.

He tugs her lip between his teeth and Rey arches her back against him, panting, wanting. She draws in a harsh breath as he unravels the tied fabric holding her breast-band in place, sliding her robe and the band aside until her chest is bear. She wiggles her hips against the bulge in his pants, trying to grind her clit against him through the rough fabric. Kylo growls against her neck, palming her breast before pinching her nipple and twisting it. Rey runs her fingers through his hair, amazed at the softness of it, the shape of it, how it springs back into a wave once she works her fingers through the strands. She doesn’t know if this is normal between a master and an apprentice, or if she is committing some grave sin by allowing him to lap at her belly while he works her pants past her hips, but either way, Rey can’t find it within herself to stop him. 

Her whole life, she has had to take the things she needs, even the good things. Rey doesn’t see why pleasure should be an exception. 

Kylo tugs off her boots, socks, her wool, fur-lined leggings. She meets his eyes as he pulls her underclothes down her hips, feeling the space between her legs throb with want. The sensation is less all-consuming than in the snow, but Rey feels just as locked into what is happening to her, as if this act can’t be halted now that it’s begun. 

“ _Fuck,_ ” Kylo sighs, running his hands up and down her sides, his fingers digging into her hips, his body poised above hers. He places a kiss on her hipbone, his hair tickling her skin. 

Rey squirms underneath him, her lower lip between her teeth. 

“Please,” she whispers, torn between wanting to watch every lick of his tongue over her inner thighs and wanting to cover her face in embarrassment. 

His eyes glinting, Kylo touches her sex with the edge of his index finger, making her whole body shudder. He drags his thumb between her folds and smears her wetness over her skin, brushing the nub of her sex and making her body clench. 

“Rey, do you want me to lick your pussy? Would you like that?”

She thinks she might cry with the way he’s looking at her, his body taunt like a bowstring, still like a predator. Whining, Rey nods.

Kylo dips his head and begins to lick the dried blood from her sex, moaning against her folds while he brushes her clit with the edge of his tongue. The heat in her belly has climbed higher, like a furnace bellowing flames through her limbs. Absently, Rey realizes that it’s her voice she’s hearing, high-pitched and wailing while Kylo slips two fingers inside her. She is still very sore down there, can feel the little tears in her skin that she barely noticed when she was astride him and full of the reckless energy of the force. He pumps his fingers inside of her anyway and, despite the pain of it, the motion coils something inside her a notch tighter, makes the rush of blood in her head pick up. 

Rey curls her legs around his form, digging the heel of her foot into his back while he braces her hips against the furs with his forearm. His touch relentless, Kylo brushes his tongue over her clit in pressured circles until everything in her body locks up, clenching like the gears of a broken machine. He keeps his mouth on her until the tension ebbs out of her body, until she feels weak and limp and perfect. 

His mouth covered in her slickness, Kylo crawls up her and easily tugs his shirt over his head, pushing his trousers down just enough to take himself in hand. He nudges her legs farther apart and, without asking, slides himself inside of her. Rey feels her muscles straining to adjust to how _full_ she feels, how impossibly filled her body is with his cock inside of her. Kylo gives her a moment to adjust while he kisses her, tongue laving against her own, both of them moaning and breathing heavily into each other. 

“You like that, scavenger?” he asks, biting at her ear while she snakes her arms around his waist, feeling how defined the slope of his muscles are beneath her fingers.

“ _Yes_. Take what you want,” Rey croaks out, knowing that she likes it, knowing that she wants nothing more than to lie here and bask in the taking. 

Kylo moans and starts to move inside her, not easing into it, not making any attempt to be gentle. The snap of his hips brings tears to her eyes but—digging her nails into his back, squeezing her eyes shut, already clenching around him—the pain is exactly what she wants. 

“Force, you feel so good,” he whispers. “You’re going to make me come fast.”

Gasping, Rey says, “ _Ah,/i > it’s ok, just don’t stop.”_

_She can feel him start to fall apart inside of her. Kylo grinds into her with more force, his thrusts hard and uneven, and she’s shaking and coming around him while he spills between her legs. Rey holds him still for a long while, her arms wrapped tight against his skin, her body clenching while she whimpers into his chest and his cock begins to grow soft._

_Propped up on one arm, Kylo brushes hair away from her face, his fingers massaging her scalp while she tries to breathe underneath him._

_Her hands working over the muscles in his back, Rey meets his eyes._

_“I liked that.”_


End file.
